Sunday, December 25, 2022

The True Meaning of Christmas

 As I was listening to the Christmas carol "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" this morning, I felt moved to share with you the lyrics and their Gnostic meaning. I am inserting a link for you to the podcast episodes that explain each lyric of the song. You may listen to the episodes, or simply read the episode transcript which is included with the podcast.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear

Emmanuel is another name for the Savior, the Christ, the Redeemer. Emmanuel means "God Is With Us." This stanze is a plea for the Redeemer to ransom, or "redeem," us. We Second Order Powers are all "Israel," not only the nation of the Hebrews. Our exile is life here in this fallen universe, and we dimly remember and dearly miss the Pleroma of the Fullnesses and Logos from which we came. The Gnostic Gospel promises redemption from the Fall by the Son of God--the Christ.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel
O come, O come, Thou Lord of might
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai's height
In ancient times didst give the law
In cloud, and majesty and awe

It is said of the Redeemer that He would come with an army that would defeat Satan. Because of these Old Testament prophesies, the Israelites were expecting a war-like General that would lead troops into battle to defeat Israel's opponents. Even John the Baptist expected a General, not the pacifist demeanor of Jesus. We have learned by studying the Gnostic Gospels that Satan will be defeated not through the shedding of blood on the battlefield, but by unconditional love. The Christ brings salvation and love to the Fallen, even to the fallen Aeon we call the Demiurge. All souls will remember and awaken to the Pleroma of the Father. The path to awakening is love.  The law given in ancient times in the lyric above was the attempt of the Demiurge to control the behavior of the Second Order Powers. The law is largely ineffective in controlling our behavior. This is why Jesus said we are saved not through our own efforts, but only by the Christ.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny
From depths of hell Thy people save
And give them victory o'er the grave

The Rod of Jesse is another way of saying the Root of Jesse, referring to the lineage of Jesus through King David and Jesse, David's father. A shepherd's rod is a club-like weapon used to defend the herd. The lyric above requests that the Savior be a weapon deployed against Satan's tyranny. Satan, the Demiurge, is a tyrannical ruler who does not have our best interests in mind. Satan's tyranny refers to his strong bonds of control and his attempts to promote loyalty to him rather than to the Father. The Demiurge is the Creator of this earth and our material cosmos, but not of our eternal spirits and souls. One of the great lies of the Demiurge is that we do not pre-exist and that we will evaporate upon our material death.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel
O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death's dark shadows put to flight

Dayspring here is another name for the Christ, from whence the light of truth springs forth. The Christ's Dayspring gives us hope that there is light beyond this existence, and life beyond death's dark shadows.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel
O come, Thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heavenly home
Make safe the way that leads on high
And close the path to misery

The Key of David refers again to the Christ. Here Christ is the Key to unlocking Gnosis. Our heavenly home is our destination after this material world passes away. The lyric is praying for Christ to come and lead us safely home, thus closing the path to the misery of this fallen world. Only Christ's redemption and guidance can bring us back to the Pleroma of the Fullness of God. Without Christ, we find ourselves trapped in the Never-ending War between our egoic, Fallen nature and our higher Self through which the Holy Spirit flows. The Demiurge would have us believe that following him and our egoic nature will bring happiness and satisfaction, but it only ever leads to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel
O come, Thou Wisdom from on high
And order all things, far and nigh
To us the path of knowledge show
And cause us in her ways to go

This verse is a clear call to embrace the gnosis, or wisdom, that comes from on high. Gnosis leads to virtue. Gnosis leads to giving glory to the God Above All Gods, the Father of consciousness and love.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel
O come, desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease
And be Thyself our King of peace
We humans are all Second Order Powers. We come from Above and we will return to Above. We share the Pleroma of Logos. The differences that divide now are by-products of being caught in the Never-ending War. They will be forgotten when the King of Peace returns and love replaces our sad divisions.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel


Wednesday, August 31, 2022

A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel Underway

 Over at the Gnostic Insights podcast, I'm in the process of publically writing my next book. I'm going through all of the episodes thus far posted and refining and polishing the material, forming it into a single, cohesive narrative, and then recording each chapter as a new episode. It has been an interesting process, not only because I am reviewing all of my work of the past few years, but also because I am uncovering within myself new gnosis at the same time. It is a wonderfully toroidal process of going around the same material in overlapping loops, finding deeper and deeper gnosis. And, whereas the original Gnostic Gospel Illuminated was purposely written for utter simplicity, this new book is written with full accompanying explanations and examples that provide the whys and wherefores. I'm also posting a transcript of each episode on the Gnostic Insights website, so listeners can read along if they desire. If you haven't yet listened to the Gnostic Insights podcast, you can listen to it at the website or on most podcast hosting apps.

Here is a snippet from last week's episode. You can reach the full episode by clicking here.

This gnosis is not an arbitrary fable. The Tripartite Tractate is more along the lines of a philosophy of science type of book rather than a book of myths. It proposes a certain starting hypothesis—that there is an original consciousness we call the Father—and it proceeds logically from that starting proposition through all the steps necessary to reach our observable universe. It is an inherently cogent argument that begins with the Father and winds up with us as living creatures in relationship with that consciousness. It “makes sense.” That is why understanding is more important here than memorization.

I believe that we all have this gnosis written within our Self that comes directly from the Father, the Son, and the Fullness of God, so awakening to this gnosis is more a matter of remembering rather than learning. Your willingness to listen with an open heart and mind is all that is required to achieve this remembrance because it is the will of the Father and the Fullness that you remember them. There is no other hidden knowledge to search out or genealogies to memorize, lodges to join, or secret rituals that must be performed; you only need to remember the gnosis that is inherent within you. It is my hope that, as you listen to this information and meditate upon it, you will come to understand the origins of our universe and our place in it. The gnostic faith is not blind faith but reasonable faith, and we were created as reasonable beings.

The Second Order of Powers are locked in a never ending war with the shadows and phantoms of the deficiency. We await the coming of the Christ's Third Order of Powers to redeem the Fall and usher us into the new economy.




Sunday, July 31, 2022

Correspondence from a fellow traveler

 

Peace Cyd,

Hope a is well. Apologize for the late response, been busy lately.

Awesome reply! I fully agree that we should observe the similarities and parallels across text, architecture, and people (etc). Describing such as fractals of the same truths is an excellent description.

I also agree that such truths come from above and within. To my knowledge, I'm not seeking or trying to put an emphasis on historical lineages; if I do it's a wrong view of my own which I need released from.

 Titus 3:9 - "Stay away from those who have foolish arguments, who talk about useless family histories, or who make trouble and fight about what the Law of Moses teaches. These things are useless and will not help anyone."


The way I visualize such truths is that there is a core and that core is taught by a few to others who wouldn't of their own be able to recognize or engage that core without some kind of assistance. That inner core is always branching out.



 Even in the example of the hand fractal in the Dr. Strange movie, there is a core hand from which all other hands branch out from.

 


 

No different than how a Buddha instructs others to deeply penetrate the four noble truths and eight fold path, who otherwise wouldn't be able to engage such truths or path on their own without some kind of assistance.

 


 

No different than how Messiah taught his disciples what it means to be anointed and how to live in that anointing.

 



 

In other words, the manner of instructing and reminding people how to tune into that divine nature, that Messiah consciousness.

 

Matthew 6:22 - “The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore if your eye is single, your whole body will be full-of-light.”

 

2Peter 1:3-4 “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and virtue. Through these things He has given us His precious and magnificent promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, since you have escaped the corruption that evil desires have brought into the world.”

 

Philippians 2:5 - “Let this mind be in you, which also was in Messiah Yeshua,”

 

1Corinthians 2:16 - “who has known the mind of Adonai, that he will instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Messiah.

 

No different than when the Adiyogi (Dakshinamurty/Rudra/Shiva) instructed the seven wise men (Saptarishis) in the way to liberation. Ultimately, sending the seven men to other parts of the world to disperse the Dharma.

 



 

 

Shloka 8 - “Then Dhyanam: Let the Guru Dakshinamurthy, who has a white body due to application of holy ash, who wears the crescent moon on his head, who holds in his hands, Jnana mudra (symbol of wisdom), beaded chain, Veena and books, who wears all ornaments, who wears the elephant hide, who resembles the meditating Rama, who sits on the throne of explanation and who is being served by great sages protect us always.” (Dakshinamurty Upanishad)

 

Hopefully this info shines further light on where I'm coming from. I have yet to work through the 'Conscious Evolution' or 'A Simple Model of Memes' podcasts, once completed I'll do my best to reply back.

 

Sincerely, 

 

Brother "B" 

Thursday, July 14, 2022

A Way of Thinking About Time, Consciousness, and Free Will

Yesterday my brother and I were musing over the nature of time--what is it exactly? It isn't a thing; it is nowhere to be located. Is it therefore a force? This was my response. I have long thought of the universe in this fashion, but I've never written it down or even shared it with my brother until yesterday. He flipped out over it. Let's see what you think...

A Giant Bowl of Jello

Here is how I picture time, space, and consciousness —

  • We live in a Jello universe--a gigantic, torus-shaped, bowl of gelatin, studded with an infinite number of cherries.
  • The Jello is the matrix that holds everything that ever was or will be.
  • The cherries are every thing that ever were or will be--all potential events, all potential objects. An infinite array of cherries already laid out as potential.
  • Consciousness is each spark of life making its way through this vast ocean of Jello.
  • Time can only be apprehended through consciousness; time is nowhere to be found if there is no observer.
  • The cherries are the full panoply of choices we could make along the way.
  • Our free will chooses to swim this way and that as it moves toward the next cherry of choice. This free will is swimming from the middle of the torus in the direction of the outside boundary of the giant torus. All of these cherries are being held within the shape of the torus—the doughy part of the donut.
  • Every lifetime is the trace of the worm-like path our consciousness chooses as it travels through the universe of cherries.

My brother, the professor of Philosophy, notes that this way of looking at time and consciousness may have just solved one of the longstanding conundrums of philosophy.  That is, how can we reconcile the concept of an all-knowing God if we subjects have free will? The answer presented by this model is that the all-knowing God has pre-placed all possible choices before us, but it is our individual free will that plots the course through these choices. This combination of potential versus choice reflects our free will.

In a real sense, the entirety of all of our lives is already conceived in potential. It is our self-awareness and free will that plod along at the speed of matter as we live our lives out as a linearity of passing time.

That's it.

In Gnostic terms, remember that the pattern of this universe mirrors a version of the hierarchy of the Aeons in the Fullness. The only way this infinite collection of Aeons can be fairly represented is if the space within the universal Boundary can accommodate all of their representations. But we are only able to tap into the representations that are relevant to our life’s path as we pass through the awareness of time. In a real sense, the entirety of all of our lives is already conceived in the Fullness. It is our Self-awareness and free will that plod along at the speed of matter as we live our lives out as a linearity of passing time.

At the universal level, the infinity of the Fullness of God is represented by the potential of all possible choices a person could make as their life passes from one decision to the next. The Fullness of all possible futures are represented within the universe; free will is driving our consciousness through those potentialities, and leaving behind the collapsed potential of its history.

Of course, the Jello salad pictured above is not to scale. The gelatin donut would be infinitely large, and the cherries relatively small.

Saturday, July 9, 2022

The Son

I have posted the article below to my podcast at The Son – Gnostic Insights . You may listen to the audio version there. This article will appear in my upcoming book. It is the second in this series ...

The Son and the ALL

Now imagine that this consciousness that we call Father gives birth to an emanation of itself. In the Simple Explanation philosophy, we call this emanation a fractal. We’ll look at fractals later in the book because they play a big part in creation.

In the religious texts they call this emanation a Son. So now we have the Father and Son. In the silence of the absolute, the Father brings forth the first and only Son from its realization of itself. The Son is the Father having a thought. The Son is the Father knowing itself as the Father and having a realization of its own eternal Self.

The Son reflects the Father's boundless greatness and love. The Son possesses every trait of the Father, for the Son is a complete encapsulation of the Father in which it dwells. Every trait of the Father is expressed now as a singularity, and that singularity is called the Son. We will also be looking at singularities, monads, and points of view in more depth later in the book.

And yet although it was a singular manifestation of the Father, the moment the Son was formed, it was no longer alone, for not only the Son, but what is called the ALL, or the Totalities, arose at once.  The ALL immediately appeared as the offspring of the Son, because the Son could not help itself from bringing others into existence, even as it was brought into existence by the Father. Because the Son is an emanation of the Father, it mirrors the Father's creativity.

And so the Father knows itself and creates the Son, and the Son knows itself and creates the ALL. In the Tripartite Tractate the ALL is known as the pre-existent Church. This is not the same as your church down on the street corner with the people in it singing hymns on Sunday, but rather this is called ”the true preexistent Church.”

The Tripartite Tractate says, "for not only the Son but also the Church exists from the beginning." The Tripartite goes on to say: "Before they all arose from the Father's thought, he knew them, but they did not know the depth in which they found themselves, nor could they know themselves or anything else, for they were within the Father as an embryo or an unsprouted seed."

Which is to say, they exist as potential. They were there, they live in the Father, they live in the Son, but they don't know anything, they don't know themselves. The Totalities of the pre-existent Church are not yet self-aware. The way the Tripartite Tractate describes this, “because they were newly formed the Father concealed their perfection from them until they could grow into the knowledge.”

This is why the Father revealed the Son to them, so that the ALL would be able to relate to the Son and see the Father's glory according to the ability of each one to receive him. Nobody sees the Father. The Father is unknowable; the Father is too immense. When people say, "Oh, you can't conceive of God. God's too big and unknowable," that's true. But God formed itself into a singularity and that singularity is called the Son. And one of the reasons the Son is there is because we can know the Son; we can't know the Father, but we can know the Son.

The Tripartite Tractate describes this this way: “The Son is no more and no less than the sum of the ALL. And they understood who he is and he is covered by the ALL. And with the birth of the ALL, the Son also became a Father.”

This can be a little confusing because you have the originating consciousness, the God Above All Gods, which is the originating consciousness we call the Father. The Father had a sense of itself and this was called the Son. The Son immediately produced itself as the form of the ALL. With the birth of the ALL, the Son also became a Father. The originating Father--that consciousness so lonely and still for eternity, now had a child who had also borne fruit from his glory, and in this way the One begat the ALL, and the Father loved them all as he loved his Son.

As I said, the ALL is referred to as the pre-existent Church and it's also called the Second Glory. The First Glory was the Son. The Second Glory is the ALL. The originating Father's consciousness is incomprehensible. Its scope and greatness is so immense and so unfathomable that the Tripartite Tractate says anyone trying to take hold of it would be annihilated, and so the Father created the Son, giving form to what had been his formless and solitary Self, for the Father's desire was to be known. His desire was to love and to be loved. The Son that arose is perfect, even as his Father is perfect and he carries within his perfect form every quality of the Father, being the perfect image of the Father. The Son's inherent creativity spread itself out into the ALL, like rays beaming forth from a central star.

In my book, the Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, I illustrate these concepts. The way I think of it is this way: when I picture the originating consciousness of the original Father, I see just total blackness, an entirety of dark, dark blackness. Then when I picture the Son emerging and being held by that blackness, I see the Son as a foggy light that begins very diffuse, very foggy, emerging out of the inky blackness. That is what I see as the Son.

 
The Son emerges from the ground state of consciousness we call the Father.

The ALL emerges immediately from the Son

In the previous episode I talked about the characteristics of the Father, as recounted by the Tripartite Tractate in the Nag Hammadi Library. Now the funny thing about that whole last episode and discussing the characteristics of the Father is that the Father is unknowable. The Father is ineffable and illimitable and all of those gigantic words which mean that we can't really comprehend the Father at all. So our attempts at description are somewhat ironic. So how is it that we can claim to know these characteristics of the Father--his sweetness, his greatness, and so forth? Well, that is because the Father reveals his own characteristics through the Son. And the Son is actually the God that we are able to relate to. Because of the Son’s form, it becomes the relatable Father to us and to the Aeons, the Son of that originating Father who is otherwise inexpressible and ungraspable.

The Son reflects and incorporates the characteristics of the Father. So it seems to me that we can infer the characteristics of the Father from the Son, and that's what I think the author of the Tripartite Tractate did--inferred what the characteristics of the Father must be by examining the characteristics of the Son. And so now in this chapter, I would like to share more about the characteristics of the Son. What is the Son? What does it mean to be the only begotten Son of God? And what was this first expression of the Father?

The Tripartite Tractate sometimes refers to the Son as Father because the Son is the Father of the Totalities. Sometimes these names get interchanged and, again, this is a bit confusing, because the first Father is the originating source, the ground state of consciousness from which all else emanates. But the Father of us and of the Totalities before us, that is the Son--the only begotten Son of the Father.

The Tripartite Tractate puts it this way: "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."

So here, near the beginning of the Tripartite Tractate, the writer is saying, and I quote, "Concerning the Father, rather, one should speak of him as good, perfect, complete, being himself the Totality. Not one of the names which are conceived or spoken, seen or grasped, not one of them applies to him, even though they are exceedingly glorious, magnifying, and honored. However, it is possible to utter these names for his glory and honor, in accordance with the capacity of each one of those who give him glory."

Which is saying that it is a reflection of the speaker, like me saying these things, or the writer of the Tripartite Tractate claiming these things about the Father that are good and glorious. It is more a reflection of our capacity to understand and grasp the Father rather than the Father itself, because the Father is unknowable and ungraspable, and so the glory that we give is a reflection of our capacity to give glory. The Tripartite says of the Father 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."

And, after describing our inability to conceive of the Father, the Father therefore brings forth the Son, which is someone that we can begin to praise and grasp with any sort of true reflection of its Self.

So it is saying we really don't know any of this stuff that we're saying about the Father. But what we can infer is that now, as it says again, quote, "He is the one who projects himself thus as generation, having glory and honor, marvelous and lovely; the One who glorifies himself, who marvels, who also loves; this is the One who has a Son who subsists in him, who is silent concerning him, who is the ineffable One in the ineffable One, the invisible One, the incomprehensible One, the inconceivable One in the inconceivable One. Thus, the Son exists in the Father forever. The Father is the One in whom he knows himself, who begot him having a thought, which is the thought of him. That is the perception of him.”

The book says, "Just as the Father exists in the proper sense, the One before whom there was no one else and the One apart from whom there is no other unbegotten One, so too the Son exists in the proper sense, the One before whom there was no other and after whom no other Son exists. Therefore he is a first-born and an only Son. ‘First-born’ because no one exists before him and ‘only Son’ because no one is after him."

So now we have the Son sitting inside of the Father, generated by the Father because the Father wished to be known. And there is no other generation of the Father other than this first One--the Son.

The Tripartite Tractate goes on to say something interesting here: that "Not only did the Son exist from the beginning, but the Church too existed from the beginning. Now he who thinks that the discovery that the Son is an only son opposes the statement about the Church because of the mysterious quality of the matter, it is not so. For, just as the Father is a unity and has revealed himself as Father for himself alone, so too, the Son was found to be a brother to himself alone, in virtue of the fact that he is unbegotten and without beginning. The Son wonders at himself along with the Father, and he gives himself glory and honor and love. Being innumerable and illimitable, his offspring are indivisible: those which, that is the Church of which we were speaking, those which exist have come forth from the Son and the Father.

And then this is an interesting analogy that the book uses. It says that the Church comes forth like kisses, a “multitude of kisses” exchanged between the Son and the Father, like "the multitude of some who kiss one another with a good, insatiable thought, the kiss being a unity, although it involves many kisses.”

So, in this analogy, the Church, the Totalities which are the constituents of the Church, are kisses that the Father and Son exchange between one another. It says, "This is the nature of the holy, imperishable spirits upon which the Son rests, since it is his essence, just as the Father rests upon the Son."

So, the Son is a singular unity, what I would say is the first fractal emanation of the consciousness of the Father. It is like the bucket dipped into the sea. It has the same characteristics of the Father, and this is how we infer what are the characteristics of the Father--by looking at the Son. And the Son is comprised of innumerable imperishable spirits that have been exchanged between the Father and Son-- like kisses. So the Son is a singular entity, however, the Son consists of uncountable spirits.

The Son is One and many at the same time, just as we humans, let's say, have a singular spirit that governs ourselves--our governing unit of consciousness is what I call it. This is what many people refer to as “the soul.” You have your one governing unit of consciousness that you think of as yourself, yet you are comprised of countless, billions and trillions of subunits, in the sense of cells, and these are your smaller units of consciousness that make up your great Self.

The Son is the same way. The Son's countless, illimitable--meaning an infinite number of--spirits make up the Son. And at this point in the Tripartite Tractate, these spirits are called the Totalities of the Church. And the Church remains within the Son. The Son “wears them like a garment” and they “wear the Son like a garment,” is how the Tripartite Tractate puts it. This is akin to our bodies and the cells inside of our bodies. Our cells don't go walking around on their own without us. We go everywhere they go and they go everywhere we go.

The Son has that same exact type of relationship with the Church or the first emanations of spirit. In fact, this is another example of the precept: “As above, so below.” The Totalities of the ALL, or the pre-existent Church, are to the Son as our cells are to us. As above, so below.

Here's how it's put in the Tripartite Tractate: "The Church exists in the dispositions and properties in which the Father and the Son exist. Therefore, it subsists in the procreation of innumerable Aeons. Also, in an uncountable way, they too beget by the properties and dispositions in which the Church exists, for these comprise its association, which they form toward one another and toward those who have come forth from them, toward the Son, for whose glory they exist."

We will revisit this idea of the generation of the Aeons later, but for now we will focus on the purpose of the Church, which is to give glory to the Son. That's their main job and that's why we have the same word "church" down here on earth. Our human church's job is to give glory to the Father and to the Son, as it was in the beginning. The celestial Church’s job is to point toward the glory of the Father and the Son.

My definition of glory and giving glory is to be in perfect alignment with the will of the Father and the Son. When you are in perfect alignment with the Father, you are "giving glory" to the Father. It has to do with where you put your focus, and the focus of the celestial Church is the Father and the Son.

I think we all have an intuitive sense of what glory means. Glory is, "Oh my gosh! This is the best thing ever!" And what does it mean to give glory? Giving glory means that you are focused on an object in adoration and love; that is giving glory. Glory is recognizing the wondrousness of the object, and giving glory is reflecting that glory back to your object of devotion. The Father and the Son are glorious. And when I give glory to God, I am loving God by seeing that glory and acknowledging it and reflecting that glory back to God.

Glory is not something that you can offer to another person. When we glorify another person or thing, that is what I would call “vain glory.” When you give glory to someone else, it is in vain. We may love each other and be devoted to each other’s welfare, but it’s not a good idea to worship each other.

Glory is not worship for the sake of worship, as if God needed our adoration. This would imply that the Father of the universe is hungry and insecure and wheedling for our affection, as if we mere mortals could offer up anything of value not already owned by the Lord of ALL. That just doesn't make any sense. Giving glory is not for God's benefit, it's for our benefit. The reason we give glory to God is because that is the method by which we tune in to God's frequency. You could say that giving glory to God is how we synchronize ourselves with the One consciousness of which we are a part. And why would we want to synchronize with the Father?

The Gnostic gospel tells us that we were designed with a homing device that gives us “indescribable pleasure” when we are in communion with the Father and when we are operating according to plan. The closer we are to dialing into the Father's frequency, the happier we feel. It is through this process of giving glory that we realign ourselves with the Universal Unit of Consciousness, or what we gnostics are calling the Father or the God Above All Gods. This is how we align ourselves for instruction and for renewal.

When we center ourselves, our big S Selves, with the Father, we feel peace, happiness, joy, and love. When we acknowledge the Origin and focus in that direction, we are giving glory and we are united in glory, and when we give glory alongside others who are themselves giving glory, we share with them a worship experience of the One that transcends what any of us can experience alone. So, you see, this is not for the benefit of a needy God, but for the edification of the Saints. Edification means strengthening. It is through giving glory that the choir of which we are a part is able to sing along with one perfect voice.

It is very important to choose your objects of glory carefully. In this distracting world in which we find ourselves, we are giving glory away right and left to things that do not deserve glory. We glorify movie stars and television stars, we glorify sports figures and pop stars. We glorify models and social influencers and products that we love. This is a distraction away from true glory, and it doesn't make us happy. Giving glory to an unworthy object is like a sugary snack that is momentarily tasty but does not satisfy true hunger. Only glorifying the Father with love can make us happy. The other objects that we may find ourselves glorifying, these are imitations. These are part of the deficiency, and so they cannot ever fulfil us the way that we hope they will.

More on the Son next week--7/16/22

Sunday, July 3, 2022

The God Above All Gods

 I have posted the article below to my podcast at The God Above All Gods – Gnostic Insights . You may listen to the audio version there. This article will appear in my upcoming book...

The Father

As you know, we've been looking at the gnostic Gospel according to the Tripartite Tractate, which is one of the books in 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. Materialist scientists don't believe in consciousness. They believe in a thing called monism, which is that we are only our physical bodies and that any appearance of consciousness or of a soul is merely a by-product of physical mechanisms, hormones, atoms moving around--this sort of thing. The counterpoint to that view, often called dualism, is that, yes, we have a physical body and then we also have a soul and it's your soul that survives after death. This gnosticism that comes from the Nag Hammadi is a religious system that presupposes that there is a soul and there is a body.

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 the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything or The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, 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 book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, 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 of Powers that populates the earth.

This is why we begin with the Father. The Father is the ground state of consciousness, and so 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 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?” After that, we can finally consider the termination 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 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 edited by Marvin Meyer; the translator in this case was a person named Einar Thomassen. The other version we are going to compare it to is the one posted at the Gnostic Society library at gnosis dot org and reprinted in The Nag Hammadi Library, translated by Harold Attridge.

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." 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."

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 called 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. 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."

This passage affirms that no matter how much we try or science tries, the underlying consciousness underneath our existence will never be grasped, will never be measured. It can't 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 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 in our universe 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 doesn’t receive. The Father 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.

The 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 is 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 and 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."

So what this is saying is that other gods with a small g have been created or been born, but not this one. This is the original God with the big G that no one created. This is the original source.

Quote: “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.”

The other translation is 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 in, that which makes him immutable and that which makes him great." 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.”

As an aside, I am reminded of the Hadron Particle Collider located in Cern, Switzerland—the largest and most complex machine on earth. The function of point of  Hadron Particle Collider is to crash elemental particles into each other, trying to split them into smaller and smaller pieces, attempting to break particles into the smallest possible particles. 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're calling the Higgs boson, or the God particle. They are literally looking for the "God particle." And, indeed, exactly ten years ago, on July 4, 2012, scientists declared they had found it.

This Tripartite description of the Father, the God Above All Gods, is saying: you cannot break God up into smaller pieces. He is immutable. He is indiscoverable in that sense. So we would have to make a prediction that these particle accelerators and colliders will not be able to find the God particle, because God is not discoverable. They may have found the Higgs boson, but God itself is undiscoverable. It cannot be broken into smaller pieces, and it seems to me that that is what this next paragraph is talking about.

"Therefore, neither does he change himself, nor will another, (such as a scientist), be able to move him from that in 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."

We can conclude from this description that if humanity managed to destroy the earth by way of a worldwide nuclear war, the Father would still be unchanged. The Father would still exist underneath it all, without having been affected. So while it may be the case that we can destroy ourselves, 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."

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…”

 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.”

So if we're going to think about our modern physics again and cosmology, and if we think if there may be multiverses, that is, we are just one universe in a sea of other universes floating in this great pool, this Father that we are describing would be back before all of that. He's not the Father of our universe alone; he's the Father of the entire sea within which other things float. Everything comes out of him, but he himself pre-exists all of that.

"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, possible to speak such names in order to glorify and praise him to the extent of the capacity of whoever wants to give glory, but the way he is in himself, his own manner of being, that no mind can conceive, no word express, nobody see and nobody touch, so incomprehensible is his greatness so unfathomable, his depth so immeasurable, his exaltedness is so boundless.”

Here at Gnostic Insights we would say that although the Father cannot possibly be grasped, we all possess a sense of him, for we all contain the 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 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 Tractate 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, is 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."

This is my description of the Father prior to conceiving of the Son. These are descriptions of the Father as the first principle, 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 description of God in the Bible. The God of the Old Testament is personified. God in the Bible is someone who can sit and have a discussion with men around a camp fire or speak out of the middle of a burning bush.

Our gnostic God exists prior to all of that and is far greater than all of that. This God is not in a personified form, walking around on earth or floating just above earth, looking down at 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, Jehovah. That personified character arises much later in the creation story than the Father we are describing.

But this is the beginning. Everything began with this Father Above All Fathers. This God Above all Gods is only goodness, joy, sweetness, true, and delightful. It is not a warlike or a jealous god. It would not send people into battle or kill the first-born of the entire Egyptian nation. This God, as you can see, is qualitatively different than that. This God is love.


The Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland, is the largest, most complex, and most energetic machine on earth.

Monday, April 4, 2022

Cyd Presents a Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel to the 2022 Aeon Byte Astro-Gnosis Conference

In March of 2022, Dr. Ropp presented an hour-long discussion concerning how the Gnostic gospel has improved the original Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. It turns out that studying the Nag Hammadi and then writing my own book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, added to and actually amended the Simple Explanation. 

So, if you are a long-time fan of the Simple Explanation, you will want to watch this presentation of The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated now woven into A Simple Explanation. The Gnostic Gospel finally cleared up some longstanding confusion over the difference between the "mud," or non-living material, and the "meat," or living Units of Consciousness.

Here is the private YouTube link to the presentation. The first five minutes is trying to cue up the Power Point for the talk

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio Appearance This Week

 Here is a link to an Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio program I will be appearing on this Thursday.  I'll be among the guests who will be speaking at the upcoming Astro Gnosis Conference to be held on March 20th. We will be discussing our upcoming presentations and other interesting topics.

Monday, January 10, 2022

Looking at Left and Right as Vice and Virtue

 You can listen to the essay below over on my Gnostic Insights podcast, available on most podcast platforms.  Or you can listen to it at the Gnostic Insights website at http://gnosticinsights.com .

In this essay, I look at the relationship between gnostic left and right, and political left and right.

Left and Right

by Cyd Ropp

I noticed something interesting the other day, while I was thinking about vice and virtue. In the Nag Hammadi, vice is referred to as being on the left, and virtue as being on the right. The Tripartite Tractate puts it this way:

To each one he gave a name.... Those belonging to the thought and those of the representation are called "the Right Ones" and "Psychic" and "the Fiery Ones" and "the Middle Ones." Those who belong to the arrogant thought and those of the likeness are called "the Left", "Hylic", "the Dark Ones," and "the Last."

The "thought" refers back to the Father's originating thought—that being what is called The Son. The Son is the thought of the Father, and it is this thought that starts everything. "Those of the representation" are the Aeons and those that come from the Aeons—they represent the values of the Thought, or the Son.

"Those who belong to the arrogant thought" refer to the Fall of Logos away from the original thought. Literally it refers to the departure of Ego away from Reason and Logic. As we have discussed here on Gnostic Insights, "arrogant thought" is another word for "ego." And here at gnostic insights "ego" is the imitation of the One Self we all embody and share. Ego is the counterfeit embodiment of the Son, or originating consciousness. Ego takes care of the individual rather than the whole. Ego is concerned with personal needs and desires rather than the needs and desires of one's neighbors.

You can listen to these previous episodes for an in-depth exploration of Ego compared to Self:

https://gnosticinsights.com/ego-vs-self/

https://gnosticinsights.com/i-am-not-me-the-self/

https://gnosticinsights.com/egos-shroud/

You can find these episodes and more under the CompleteEpisodes tab at the GnosticInsights.com website.

Back to the Tripartite Tractate quote—Those who belong to the arrogant thought and those of the likeness are called "the Left", "Hylic", "the Dark Ones," and "the Last."

The "likenesses" referred to on the left are the archons of the deficiency that were formed as copies of "the representations" of the Aeons of the Pleroma.  So you have Likenesses on the Left, and Representations on the Right. These Likenesses on the one hand and Representations on the other hand, reflect the values of the Left and the values of the Right. This is what distinguishes Gnostic Left from Right. Another word for these ones on the Left is "hylic," which means materialist. Another word for the ones on the Right is "Psychic," which in Gnosticism refers to those with a soul.  Although here at Gnostic Insights, we would say everyone has a soul, it's just that hylic humans don't acknowledge the soul.  And, we've had a lot of discussions about that; whether or not consciousness, which could be another word for soul, whether or not consciousness is an inherent quality that preexists or whether consciousness is like a by-product of the meat bodies that we wear, or even mathematical nodes in some sort of a grand algorithm.  One type of individual has an orientation to the material and personal needs, and the other type of individual has a remembrance of the spiritual realm. They also call the ones on the left "dark ones" and "the last." And that's because light is associated with the Father, and after the Fall—the Fall was from the light into darkness.  And the reason that those are called "the last" is simply because they are going to be the last ones to acknowledge the Father, the Pleroma, and the Son, and the Christ. They are going to hold out for their materialist worldview, which will make them last in line for redemption, by their own choice.

So, when I drew up the chart of vices vs. values in my Gnostic Gospel Illuminated book, the archonic values appear on the left side of the page and the aeonic values appear on the right side of the page.

The archonic values on the left are the inverse of the Aeonic virtues on the right. So, for example, if on the Right, the value is loving, then on the Left, the value is hateful and spiteful. If on the Right the value is patience, then on the Left the value is impatience and wrath. Mercy vs. ruthlessness; freedom of will vs. enslavement and coercion; joy vs. depression; truthful vs. lies; prudent vs. reckless; humble vs. arrogance; justice vs. unfairness and capriciousness; temperance vs. gluttony; charitable vs. greedy... you get the point. You can find the entire chart on page 26 of The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated book by Cyd Ropp.

What I noticed the other day, is that Left and Right are also worldwide political patterns. And, whereas the personal labels deal with one's own life choices, the political labels deal with how the government names and then accomplishes its goals.  This morning I looked up differences between the values and methods of the Left and Right political bodies. And here is what I read:

the Left favors                                       while the Right favors

equity                                                   equality

constraint                                              liberty

prohibition of hate speech                     free speech

technological oversight                         privacy

universal governmental assistance         self-determination and responsibility

Bigger Governments                             Smaller Governments

race and class distinctions                     color-blind society, one nation under God

relative values depending on circumstances    universal absolutes

gender as a social construct                   biologically determined gender

secular government and society             secular government, religious society

greatest threat = environmental collapse          evil

all cultures are equal                             some cultures are superior

 

What I was wondering about Left and Right, was if the moral values a person holds also determine the political values they hold. And, to a large extent, it appears to me that they do. The social policies of the Left seem to favor exterior control over interior control. The bigger governments favored by the Left not only cost more in taxes to pay for them, they require more coercion to enforce their will in order to get the job done. Big government favors mandates and the use of technology to monitor and compel these mandates. People who disagree with the government's edicts are denied the right to speak their dissent out loud, and continued dissent can cost forfeiture of their freedoms of movement and association as well. Political prisoners are those people who disagree most strongly with those in power. Any and every tactic is justified if it advances the goals of the Left—lying about the status quo, or about history, or about scientific facts come to mind. In the service of achieving Leftist goals, anything goes. And the further Left you are on the Left-Right spectrum, the deeper and stronger is your affiliation with this "whatever it takes" approach.

On the other hand, the more one tips the scales to the Right side, the more you see values such as freedom of speech and other liberties, smaller government, and more emphasis on privacy, self-determination, and personal responsibility. These values are also in line with the virtuous side of the Left-Right spiritual divide. Of course, there may be wolves in sheep's clothing, posing as Right types while secretly holding onto Leftist memes and goals. In this case, you actually have Leftists posing as Rightists.

Extremism in either the Left of Right direction both encourage archonic interference in human affairs, as they represent the person's strong attachment to power and control over self and others. Power and control over humans is much to be desired by the Demiurge and its archonic helpers. Anytime one favors an authority pulling the strings and forcing behavior upon the citizenry, you have Leftist values at play. This is Demiurgic. Inversely, anytime one favors personal responsibility and self-determination, you are embodying Aeonic virtues.

Now, the interesting thing about these Left vs. Right lists is that both sides were established by the Aeon known as Logos. The TripartiteTractate says that those on the Left are put into ruling positions here on earth, and work in direct cooperation with the archons of the deficiency. They are not evil, but rather they provide order  through three means: beauty, threats, and lust for power. Here's the quote:

"Also over those who belong to the likeness, he set the word of beauty, so that he might bring them into a form. He also set over them the law of judgment. Again, he set over them the powers which the roots had produced in their lust for power. He appointed them as rulers over them, so that, either by the support of the word which is beautiful, or by the threat of the law, or by the power of lust for power, the order might be preserved from those who have reduced it to evil, while the Logos is pleased with them, since they are useful for the organization."

Those on the Right operate in a different way. Those on the Right carry an active remembrance of the Father and the Pleroma, and this is used to lessen their grip on this material existence. Here is what the Tripartite says about it:

"However, to those of the thought he revealed the thought... in order that they might also bring forth an impulse for diminution from their attraction to evil, so that they might not any more rejoice in the glory of their environment and be dissolved, but might rather see their sickness in which they suffer, so that they might beget love and continuous searching after the one who is able to heal them of the inferiority."

Both the Left and the Right have a lust for power as a result of the original Fall and the never-ending battle with the material forces of the Demiurge. The Tripartite Tractate also says that both the Left and the Right are respecters of authority and hierarchical chains of command. In other words, neither the Left nor Right promotes anarchy.

"The Logos knows the agreement in the lust for power of the two orders. To these and to all the others, he graciously granted their desire. He gave to each one the appropriate rank, and it was ordered that each one be a ruler over a place and an activity. He yields to the place of the one more exalted than himself...  There are kings, there are lords and those who give commands, some for administering punishment, others for administering justice, still others for giving rest and healing, others for teaching, others for guarding.

"Over all the archons he appointed an Archon with no one commanding him. He is the lord of all of them, that is, the countenance which the Logos brought forth in his thought as a representation of the Father of the Totalities. Therefore, he is adorned with every <name> which <is> a representation of him, since he is characterized by every property and glorious quality. For he too is called "father" and god" and "demiurge" and "king" and "judge" and "place" and "dwelling" and "law."

"The Logos uses him as a hand, to beautify and work on the things below, and he uses him as a mouth, to say the things which will be prophesied.

"The things which he has spoken he does. When he saw that they were great and good and wonderful, he was pleased and rejoiced, as if he himself in his own thought had been the one to say them and do them, not knowing that the movement within him is from the spirit who moves him in a determined way toward those things which he wants."

This long passage I have just quoted from the Tripartite Tractate is saying that the fallen Aeon known as Logos left behind an imitation of the Father Above in the form of the Demiurge. And it is this Demiurge that puts the Archons in power over earthly rulers. And it is the Demiurge that speaks to the prophets as the voice of God. But the Demiurge is not God, but rather the imitation of the Father above, and the Demiurge does not realize this because he has amnesia of everything that came before the Fall.

And, as previous episodes have pointed out, the methods of the Demiurge are not the methods of the Father, and the goals are not the same. For, whereas the Demiurge is all about control of this material world and those of us who reside here, the goal of the Father is about love, remembrance of our Aeonic inheritance and ultimate abode, and redemption from evil. And, whereas the Demiurge requires coercion and the exercise of power and strong control to effect its agendas, the Aeonic side of the divide operates through cooperation and the Simple Golden Rule of working together with information, assistance, and love for the betterment of all. The Left is not evil, so much as it is attempting to instantiate Paradise without benefit of the Aeonic virtues.

So the next time you wonder if you are serving the Demiurge and its archons or if you are serving the Aeons, the Son, and the Father, look to the list of vices and virtues, look to the policies of the Left and the Right, and determine for yourself which path you are on.