Here's an episode of Gnostic Insights podcast that I uploaded this week, on October 29th. Pretty good essay on the relationship between us and the realm above. You can access the episode here, or you can read the script below.
As Below, So Above: Inferring the
Transcendent
by Cyd Ropp, Ph.D. for Gnostic Insights Podcast
The manner by which we are mining gnosis here
at Gnostic Insights often involves using analogies between what is known and
what is less tangible—"as below, so above" provides a handy tool for
inferring otherwise undetectable aspects of the spiritual dimension. If we
start with the premise of a singular consciousness that pre-exists everything
that came after it, then we can follow the genesis of our universe from that
consciousness step-by-step. In today's episode, we are going to map aspects of
our human personalities onto the Gnostic Gospel to see what we can infer about
ourselves down here below and about the forms of consciousness above.
So, what do we "know" by now? We generally begin at the beginning and build
outward from there. So we start with consciousness. We know that all life forms
are conscious, and we infer from that a ground state of consciousness, and that
we call the Father. The Father, or consciousness itself, is not the same as
having thoughts. It is simply self-awareness. This is the no-thought state that
people seek through meditation.
Then we say that consciousness, or the Father,
or what we call in the Simple Explanation—the Metaverse—had a thought. This
thought is a ripple in consciousness that rises out of the undifferentiated
state of no-thought. The Gnostic Gospel calls this thought the Son. The Son
reflects the consciousness of the Father in a circumscribed form. Circumscribed
means contained, like drawing a circle around something. Yet, the Son is not
lesser than the Father, because there is no size or distance here; and there is
no time or space in the eternal omnipresent.
The Tripartite Tractate says that no sooner
did the Son arise, that it had its own thought which differentiated into every
possible thought, like rays of light shooting out from a central star. The Son
mirroring the creative act of the Father gave rise to himself in the form of
countless thoughts. These thoughts became aware of themselves in the same
manner that the Son became self-aware. The moment they became self-aware, they
named themselves. And the moment they named themselves, they sorted themselves
into a hierarchy of relationships with one another.
These thoughts of the Son are called Aeons,
and the hierarchy into which they arranged themselves is called the Fullness of
God, also known as the Pleroma. The Aeons consist of names, stations, ranks,
duties, and locations. This is another way of saying that the Aeons form a kind
of geometry of functions and forms that all know where and what and who they
are in relationship with each other. Within the hierarchy of the Fullness, all
Aeons have their own identities as well as their self-assigned locations and
functions. Everyone knows who they are and where they stand in their
intermingled ecology. Each Aeon occupies a unique place and perspective within
the union of the Fullness. No one is left out and no one is more important than
any other Aeon of the hierarchy.
The Fullness reflects the entirety of the Son.
They co-exist and overlap. The Son wears the Fullness as a garment, and the
Fullness wears the Son, in the same manner that our own bodies can be said to
be a garment for our souls—our bodies contain and co-exist with our selves. The
Fullness is a singular entity composed of countless Aeons, in the same way that
our bodies are singular organism composed of countless cells.
The Aeons sat in a unified state. "All
for one and one for all!" is their motto. Their main function is to love
and to be loved. They love each other; they love the Son. The Aeons love the
Father and gave constant glory to the Father, so happy were they to be alive.
The Aeons yearned for communion with the Father for they recognized themselves
as the fruit of the Father. In the same manner that blood flows throughout our
bodies, delivering oxygen and nutrients to every cell, the Holy Spirit of the
Father's consciousness flowed through the Aeons of the Fullness, constantly
feeding them love.
Although the Aeons dwelt within the single
body of the Fullness, they were each an independent self. Their immense variety
required them to work together and remain in full agreement, for only through
their union could they approach the Father's greatness. It was only in their
unanimity that they reflected the perfection of the Son, and only the Son had
direct access to the Father. If they were not in complete agreement, then they could
not add up to the Fullness of the Son.
It was through giving glory to the Father that
the Fullness remained unified as one body. Giving glory means focusing upon an
object with adoration and love. The Tripartite Tractate tells us that there was
a simple set of rules that insured the unanimity of the Fullness. In order to
remain aligned with the Father, the Aeons needed to glorify only the Father and
never themselves. The Aeons were not to glorify their neighbors, neither those
beside them nor those above them. They were not to glorify the Fullness as a
whole. Rather their focus was to remain upward, giving glory only to the
Father. Furthermore, each Aeon was to give glory from its own location in the
hierarchy, with its own talents and capabilities, and not borrowing the talents
of its neighbors.
I know we have covered this territory before
on Gnostic Insights. But bear with me and we will soon be able to relate this
information to ourselves and our lives here below.
Our universe began with the Fall.
The Tripartite Tractate calls the Aeon-who-Fell,
"Logos." That is a significant name. Logos is defined as the
principle of order and reason. If we think of the logos within ourselves, we
would align logos with our mind's reasoning capabilities, including the ability
to apply logic and make inferences.
The Tripartite Tractate says that Logos was
the final Aeon produced when the Aeons sorted themselves into their
hierarchical arrangement of the Fullness of God. This Aeon, Logos, contained
within itself not only the ability to reason, it also contained all of the
traits and abilities of the Fullness, wrapped into a single package. In terms
of the Simple Explanation, we would say that Logos was the perfect fractal of
the Fullness, carrying within itself all of the knowledge and functions of all
of the other Aeons.
The Bible's Gospel of John identifies this
Aeon called Logos as the Son, but this is an error, according to Gnostic
cosmology. As we have just laid out in the cosmology, the Son is the first
fruit of the Father, and the Son is the father of the Fullness. The Aeon who
Fell is but one Aeon out of the Fullness. Yes, you can see how Logos reflects
the Son, being a fractal of the Fullness of the Son, however, it is only a
fractal, an iteration of the Son in a lesser form, not to be confused with the
Son, who precedes it and is more exalted than the Aeons. The Aeon called Logos
carries fractal copies of all the Aeons within itself, but these aeonic copies
are not each self-aware in the way the Aeons themselves are self-aware. The
aeonic copies contained within the Aeon known as Logos are not themselves
conscious; they are merely fractal reflections of the hierarchy, but lacking
the consciousnesses of the Aeons. By way of analogy, think of the fractals of
the imitation like two-dimensional reflections of a three-dimensional world as
seen in a mirror; a resemblance of the Aeons only on the surface, lacking the
depth of consciousness and thought.
The Tripartite Tractate tells us that the Aeon
known as Logos yearned to reunite with the Father, as did all of the Aeons. But
rather than sitting with the others in the Fullness, giving glory according to
the rules of unanimity, Logos had a
thought that deviated from the rules. Logos had its own, singular, bright idea.
This idea came to be known as the "presumptuous thought" in Gnostic
cosmology. "Presumptuous"
means "failing to observe the limits of what is permitted or
appropriate." What Logos decided to do was to reach out to the Father all
on its own. In other words, Logos mistook its own personal will for the will of
the Fullness of God. Logos mistook himself, you could say, for the Son. It is
this presumptuous thought, borne out of misplaced love for the Father, that
caused the Fall. This presumptuous thought was the original sin.
Christianity continues to make the same error
of identification that Logos made. Logos is not the Son; Logos is the Aeon-Who-Fell.
Logos separated itself from the Fullness of
the Son when it took action on its own. This action of leaving the Fullness to
strike out on its own is the first act of the Ego. The Ego of Logos brought
about the Fall. This action of Ego is
the true nature of the Fall—not a human being handing another human being forbidden
knowledge in the form of a magic apple. The Fall is birthed by the Ego acting
outside of the Will of God, which is to say, Ego putting itself on the throne
and making decisions on its own.
And this is very true of our own personal
human psyches as well. When Ego displaces Self at the center of our Unit of
Consciousness, as we call it in the Simple Explanation, then we are allowing
our self-centered Ego to run the show. Ego displaces the One Self we share with
the Fullness and the Son.
And it's all downhill from there. Logos Fell
and broke apart into poor, weak imitations of the Aeons above. And, because
they were no longer arranged in the orderly ecology of the Fullness, the
imitations lacked places, functions, and names, throwing them into a disordered
state of chaos. The imitations of the Aeons were not self-aware in the manner
of the Aeons whose figures they mirrored, and this lack of consciousness
manifested only disturbance, upheaval, and confusion. These phantoms of the
deficiency did not reflect in any way the glory of the Fullness, the Son, or
the Father. They were feeble, small, and unruly. There was no cooperative will
among them. There was no Golden Rule.
Here is how this is described in my book, The
Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, pages 20 and 21:
"Presumptuous thought and arrogance
replaced the wisdom granted by the Father, and Logos lost himself to ignorance
and oblivion. Everything he produced as a result fell disastrously short of his
intended glory. The imitations produced
as a consequence of the Fall lacked the ability to reason. Their only thought
was for themselves, arising as they did from division. They thought they were
all there was, and they admired only themselves, not realizing they were but
dark shadows of the Aeons of the Fullness.
"Because Logos had been reaching for the
heights when he fell, the imitation of the Fullness that emerged from the Fall
kept trying to reach the unreachable. Only now, what had been a desire of the
Aeons to reunite with their Father became an upward striving for power.
Personal ambition eclipsed the Father's will."
And, by way of analogy, so it is with all of
us. When our Ego holds the throne of our Unit of Consciousness, as we would say
in Simple Explanation terms, when our Ego is put in the center rather than the
Self, then we experience the same sort of self-centered ambition and the only
drive becomes power. When the Self sits at the center of our consciousness,
rather than our Ego, then our Self is in full alignment with the One, with the
Son, and with the Fullness.
The Tripartite Tractate says that the best
part of Logos was horrified by the chaos it had created and fled back to its
brethren in the Fullness, abandoning the broken imitation. So let us consider what of Logos was left
behind when the best part of the Aeon abandoned the deficiency. The answer
would be Ego. The Ego of Logos had no remembrance of the Fullness or the Father,
for the Self that fled to the Fullness was the sliver of consciousness that
remembered the Father. The Ego of Logos, abandoned below, continued to believe
that it was all there was, having forgotten the true nature and source of
consciousness. The Ego of Logos did not remember love or the life of the
Pleroma. As the best part of Logos had vacated, the Ego of Logos took over
management of the Fallen deficiency. We know from both the Bible and from the
Tripartite Tractate that the God of this universe brought order to the chaos, forming
the heavens and the earth.
However, since the creations of the Fall
lacked self-awareness and intrinsic order, they needed to be ruled with an iron
fist. Lacking aeonic cooperation and unity, the imitations of the deficiency
required their every move to be directed by the Ego of the Fallen Aeon. The God
of this cosmos is known as the Demiurge in Gnostic studies, a term it borrows
from ancient Greek philosophy. The Demiurge is described as an artisan-like
figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. In the
Bible, the God of this universe is known as Yahweh, or Jehovah.
Unfortunately, this God, the maker of the
heavens and earth, is not the same as the Father above, as we have seen from
the Gnostic cosmology. This Demiurge is a slight-of-hand misdirection from the
true source of life and light. This is one reason I like to begin these
discussions with the Father, and show the relationship of the Father to the Son
and the Son to the Aeons of the Fullness, in order to demonstrate that this is
not the same Father as the one we were taught to consider the Almighty. The God
of this earth and of this material universe was created out of Ego, during the
Fall. This God is the fruit of the original sin. This is definitely not the God
Above All Gods, who is our right and proper source of consciousness and the
glorious focus of our devotion. This Demiurge, who calls himself the Father, is
not the Father Above. This Demiurge is only the Egoic manifestation of one
Fallen Aeon.
And again, to make an analogy to our own
psyches, our Ego is often mistaken for the Self. But, it is the Self that is
the true reflection of the Father and of the Fullness of God. The Ego is merely
a Fall away from the Self; and when you fall away from the Self, or the
Fullness of God, you mistake your own Ego for Truth. But it is not Truth; it is
a reflection of the world. It is a reflection of those things around us in the
material world that are created by the Demiurge.
The manner by which the Demiurge becomes the
God of this universe is logically self-evident, considering the Gnostic fable
I've just shared. The reason for the Fall is that Logos forgot about the rules
of cooperation and unanimity that allowed the Fullness to sing their song of
glorious praise. Presumptuous thought brought the Ego of Logos to the forefront
and replaced its spirit of cooperation with self-centered ambition and lusting
for power. In terms of the Simple
Explanation, the Universal Unit of Consciousness became shrouded by the Ego of
the Demiurge, and the Self of Logos retreated to the Fullness to lick its
wounds.
Left on its own, what the Demiurge lacked in
terms of the cooperative structure of the Fullness, it made up for with brute
force. The Demiurge was able to create order in the material world by a system
of bondage and close supervision. The Demiurge took the disordered material of
the quantum foam and caused it to level up in a manner reminiscent of the
aeon's Golden Rule. Particles to atoms, atoms to molecules, molecules to
elements, elements to minerals. But where the Golden Rule uses the principle of
reaching out to others to willingly hold hands and share information,
assistance, and love for the betterment of All, the Demiurge uses strings that
bind and entwine from a central source, giving no choice in the matter. The
Demiurge fills in the lack of consciousness within the deficiency with its own
egoic power and plans. The Demiurge is a tyrant who exercises complete
domination.
We who are conscious here below are not simply
puppets of the Demiurge. The Gnostic Gospel explains that Logos and the
Fullness sought a solution to overthrow what had come into being through the
Fall. The Aeons fashioned a fruit that reflected their own lives, and imbued
this fruit with life and a memory of the Fullness and the Golden Rule of
Cooperation. This fruit was sent into the deficiency, our universe, one at a
time, from the smallest and most humble to the largest and most complex. It is
these life forms that inhabit the universe, and they are called the Second
Order of Powers. Born from a good, cooperative thought, the Second Order Powers
work in harmony and love, for they had come forth from the harmony and love of
the Fullness and the Father.
The life forms of our universe are a melding
of the Fullness of God, with all of the consciousness and cooperation that
comes from the Fullness, with the material controlled by the Demiurge. This
marriage of the Fullness to the Demiurge creates an arena of constant conflict
and striving, both within ourselves and with our neighbors as we strive with
elements of Self and Ego, Above and Below, virtue and vice, freedom and
tyranny. We find ourselves in a "never-ending war" with forces and
principalities beyond our control as we balance our lives between the powers of
the Demiurge and the powers of the Pleroma. In the course of battle, most of us
have forgotten our aeonic inheritance.
The good news is that the Gnostic cosmology
doesn't stop there. In order to restore memory and reason to the Second Order
Powers, the Aeons of the Fullness, every one of them individually and all of
them collectively, gave glory in unison to their Father while praying for a
helper to bring peace to the Deficiency and forgiveness to Logos. Out of their
focused prayer, a unique fruit emerged, one that contained all of the
capabilities and powers of the Fullness along with all of the love and eternal
qualities of the Father.
In Simple Explanation
terms, the Christ is a perfect and full fractal of the Father and the Son, all rolled up
into One perfect form.
Christians believe
that Jesus of Nazareth was both perfect Man and perfect God incarnate.
Christian Gnostics believe the same. Here is the more complete explanation of
who Jesus was:
It is said that Jesus
was conceived without sin, because he carried within his body the perfection of
Man and God. This would mean that Jesus’s DNA was perfect and true to the
original DNA formula for humanity, hence the importance of the virgin birth
that imparted that perfect DNA to the baby.
Jesus was also without
negative karma in his soul, as his soul was the soul of God.
The components of
Jesus’s body were also without sin, as the cells and flesh that became Jesus
were in fact the Aeons of the Fullness incarnate. As Colossians 1:19 says, “For
God was pleased to have all his Fullness dwell in him, and through him to
reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
This one sentence from
Colossians contains the entire Christian Gnostic gospel. Because Jesus brought
along the entire Fullness of the Pleroma when he incarnated, every aspect of
the Father and the Son came to material instantiation on earth. In this manner,
the eternal God experienced the finite life of us Second Order Powers and all
of the struggles between birth and death that plague us all.
Here is how the
Tripartite Tractate describes it:
“They gathered
together, asking the Father with beneficent intent that there be aid from
above, from the Father, for his glory since the defective one could not become
perfect in any other way, unless it was the will of the Pleroma of the Father,
which he had drawn to himself, revealed, and given to the defective one. 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 Fullnesses, revealing the countenance of the Father, of whom
the Aeons thought as they gave glory and prayed for help for their brother with
a wish in which the Father counted himself with them. Thus it was willingly and
gladly that they brought forth the fruit.
“And he made manifest
the agreement of the revelation of his union with them—which was his beloved
Son... the one who is properly called ‘Savior’ and ‘the Redeemer’ and ‘the
Well-Pleasing One’ and ‘the Beloved,’ ‘the One to whom prayers have been
offered’ and ‘the Christ’ and ‘the Light of those appointed,’ in accordance
with the ones from whom he was brought forth, since he has become the names of
the positions which were given to him. Yet, what other name may be applied to
him except ‘the Son,’ as we previously said, since he is the knowledge of the
Father, whom he wanted them to know?
“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. They came forth in a multifaceted form in order that the
one to whom help was to be given might see those to whom he had prayed for
help. He also sees the One who gave it to him.” [Tripartite Tractate,
sections 85—87]
So, you see, the
mission of the Christ, as stated in Colossians, was to redeem all of creation,
including the fallen Aeon who founded our material universe. Because the Christ
came to redeem everyone, the body of Jesus came to earth with every one of the
Fullnesses on board. For every fallen spirit, the Christ brought their own
personal and recognizable Savior. The function of Jesus as an earthly, human
savior, is to demonstrate to us that we can all be redeemed and resurrected out
of the mud and death and into everlasting life. The Jesus figure is presented
as our exemplar of how we may all rise, every one of us, including the Demiurge
itself. In Simple Explanation terms, the Christ brought the correcting formula
for all of our spirits and souls, each unique and personally formulated to meet
our individual needs. The baptism of the Christ washes away the mental and
spiritual confusion brought on by the endless war with shadows of the
Fall.
Gnostics are
apocalyptic, as are Christians. There will soon come a day when the Deficiency
ends. On that day, a new economy will unite Heaven and Earth, and all souls
will find their joyous place in Paradise. The only forms banished to the outer
darkness will be the shadows and phantoms of the Fall, which did not exist
within the Father from the beginning. These shadows are not real, and they have
no home with us in Paradise, and the light of the Father will evaporate them.
