Our Aeonic Inheritance
According to
the Tripartite Tractate, the structure of the Pleroma is described as a
hierarchical structure where the spiritual aeons are at the top, the psychical
(mental) aeons are in the middle, and the physical (material) aeons are at the
base. The material types of the Pleroma must be thought of as forces and
powers, not as actual material, for the Pleroma is an ethereal concept that
rests outside of our material universe. The
psychical types are similar to the personalities of the gods of various ancient
religions—Greek and Roman gods, Egyptian gods, and so on. These types of aeons
have well-defined personalities and talents. The spiritual types are called the
“spiritual ones” and the “original church,” and it is their job to remain
focused on the Father, continuously giving glory. Giving glory to the Father is
the method by which the Pleroma remains aligned with the One and functioning
within the Father’s will.
These three
types of aeons sit together in the hierarchy of the Pleroma. And while we
identify the spiritual type as closest to the One, all aeons of the Pleroma are
virtuous and good, for they are expressions of all of the traits of the Son,
and the One and the Son are good. The aeons of the Pleroma (the ALL, the
Fullness, the Totalities) have material counterparts here in our material
universe, although they themselves are ethereal potentials with no physical or energetic
manifestation. The aeons and their forces and personalities are more akin to
thoughts or designs than they are to creatures.
We humans
are aggregates of all three types of aeons, fulfilling a version of the adage “As
above, so below.” The material part is our physical structure--the mud and meat informed by the
matter-building aeonic forces and powers. We can think of these matter-building
forces and powers as the primary forces of our universe, such as electromagnetic
energy, gravity, and the strong and weak atomic forces, coupled with the laws
of physics and chemistry. All together these material forces and powers build
every physical structure in our universe, from sub-atomic particles through
stars and galaxies, as well as all of the material building blocks of life
forms. The matter formed by these forces will not continue on when the end of
this cosmos comes, although the aeonic forces will.
The
psychical part of our human bodies is very easy to identify as the
psychological nature of our selves—our personalities, our talents, our emotions
and minds. Our personal identity mainly resides in the psychical level. Our
identities will continue after the cosmos is over, because our identities are
fractal composites of the personality aeons. When Jung talks about sub-selves
and archetypes, this is what he is referring to.
The
spiritual part of ourselves is that part which is often identified as our
higher Self—the inner sense of awe of the transcendent. This is the part that
turns to prayer and other worshipful activities such as meditation, hymn
singing, and religious rituals designed to strengthen that connection with our
higher self and communicate with God. This is the portion that keeps us aligned
with the Father and the Pleroma—that which faces onward and upward. This part
will also continue on as it is patterned after the spiritual aeons.
All three
elements of the person--the material,
the psychical, and the spiritual—are part of us, and it is our life task to
recognize and merge these fragmented parts into an integrated whole.
The
Tripartite Tractate says that there are people who are mostly physical, people
who are mostly psychical, and there are a few who are mostly spiritual. We can
observe this through personal experience.
The physical
types we call materialists. They generally believe that matter is really all
that exists and that consciousness is a only a fleeting by-product of the
material brain of humans brought about by chemical reactions. Materialists
often work in the sciences, describing the physical universe as precisely as
they can. There are even psychologists who are physical types; they tend to
believe that humans are simply conditioned from birth to behave the way they
do. BF Skinner, the father of behaviorism and discoverer of operant
conditioning, is a good example of a materialist psychologist who did not
believe in either the psychical or spiritual dimensions.
The
psychical types of humans are quite interested in the life of the mind. “I
think therefore I am,” as Descartes put it. They may even be solipsists—folks who
believe that their mind is the only mind and everything and everyone else in
the apparent universe is a projection of their own viewpoint. This position is
sometimes called extreme egocentrism.
The
spiritual types of humans are those whose primary orientation is upward toward
the Father. These are the prophets, teachers, evangelists, hymn singers and composers,
and so on. They often discount the importance of the ego self and the physical
body, placing emphasis upon the higher Self and the spiritual plane. They are
sometimes mendicants or those with a strong streak of asceticism, as was Buddha
before his experience of Enlightenment.
In my
imagination, the Pleroma sits in its hierarchy like a pyramidal-shaped slime
mold. The fascinating thing about slime molds is that they are comprised of
single-celled organisms that work as a fully integrated whole, moving as one,
simultaneously sharing information and nutrition across the entirety. “All for
one and one for all” is their motto. Like the slime mold, the Pleroma is both a
singular unit as well as a collection of individuals with one mind, singing one
song, dreaming one dream.
The dream of
the Pleroma is that place we humans recognize as Paradise. In this dream of
theirs, there are the “figures” which preceded us and our world. The Pleroma
dreams of our entire cosmos, including everything and everyone in it, with all
of the figures imagined in the same manner a human filmmaker imagines the
characters and settings of a movie long before the stage is built, characters
cast, and the play enacted and filmed. And the way the Paradise is constructed
and populated is by the aeons (Totalities) combining their abilities and talents to make
up novel combinations of themselves.
According to
the Tripartite Tractate, we are the “living figures” that represent in this
material world the figures and forces of the Pleroma, and we are patterned
directly from them and we are their “fruit.”
“Not only did the aeons generate the countenance of the
Father to whom they gave praise, ... but also they generated their own; for the
aeons who give glory generated their countenance and their face. They were
produced as an army for him, as for a king, since the beings of the thought have
a powerful fellowship and an intermingled harmony.” [Tripartite Tractate, v. 87]
“The fruit of the agreement with him, of which we previously
spoke, is subject to the power of the Totalities (aeons). For the Father
has set the Totalities within him, both the ones which pre-exist and the ones
which are, and the ones which will be. ... He directed the organization of the
universe according to the authority which was given him, from the first and
according to the power of the task.” [Tripartite Tractate, v. 88]
The way this
generation came about is part of Gnostic cosmology. It is said that the best
and brightest of the aeons reached for the glory of the Father and attempted to
reunite with the One without consensus, leaving behind the rest of the Pleroma.
Instead of reuniting with the Father, the aeon fell out of the Pleroma and
broke open in another dimension, scattering its components in all directions.
It is this scattering of the disobedient aeon that became our cosmos. At first
the cosmos was entirely chaotic, arising as it did from disobedience. The Pleroma,
in concert with the Father, immediately sent down their forces, talents, and
personalities to give structure and order to the chaos. These were all based
upon the aeons’ dream of Paradise. In this manner, creation was populated by fruit
of the Pleroma.
“Then from the harmony, in a joyous willingness which had
come into being, they brought forth the fruit, which was a begetting from the
harmony, a unity, a possession of the Totalities, revealing the countenance of
the Father, of whom the aeons thought as they gave glory and prayed for help
for their brother (who fell) with a wish in which the Father counted himself
with them. Thus, it was willingly and gladly that they bring forth the fruit.”
[Tripartite Tractate, v. 86]
Our world
reflects the multiplicity of the aeons’ dream of Paradise, overlaid upon the
consequences of the broken cosmos created by the Fall. Our universe mirrors
Paradise and its figures while still possessing the chaos and shadows that
arose from the Fall. We creatures here below must contend with the disaster of
the Fallen state, yet with a dim remembrance of the Pleroma, the Father, and the
Paradise which is our true home.
In order to
give more assistance to us, the living figures, in our struggles with the shadows
of the Fall, the Father and the Pleroma produced another fruit that was the
perfection of the entirety combined with the love and eternal traits of the
Father. This one is called the Christ, and it came to our cosmos in the guise
of every form and figure, so that every form and figure would recognize it and
receive aid, reassurance, and redemption. The plan is for every manifestation
of the material cosmos to be inhabited by the correcting information and love
of the Christ, thereby eliminating once and for all the Fallen State. At that
point, our eternal spirits will return to a new home in Paradise, where there
is no death or destruction, no loss, or grief, and every living figure that has
existed throughout time will someday call home.
It is our
life’s task to integrate the physical, psychical, and spiritual aeons of which
we are composed into a single, “truly living” figure. This can only be
accomplished with the guiding aid of the Christ to steer our spiritual orientation
onward and upward. We call this “giving glory” to either the Christ or the
Father, which necessitates a turning away from focus on our isolated egos and
preoccupation with our physical forms.In Gnostic
Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth is Christ incarnate. He was a fully integrated
human being, fully human, fully God, sent to lead humanity out of our fallen, fragmented
state. It is said that on judgment day, every living figure will recognize,
remember, and repent, with help from the Christ, that they came from the Father
and to the Father they will gladly return. This, of course, is exactly what the
aeons who are our parents are waiting for. Waiting to welcome us home.
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You may read all about this in my very simple book, The New Gnostic Gospel. Please purchase here.