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Today’s episode is a continuation of a discussion of my simple model of memes out of my book, A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything.
In our previous episode, we discussed the basic model of memes. Memes are any thought a person can have—any piece of information I categorize as a meme. Motherhood is a meme. All religions are memes. Everything is memes. Whatever belief you hold, whether it’s a cluster of beliefs, (and I call these meme chords), or a single belief, (that’s what I’m referring to as a meme).
In our previous episode, we discussed political memes, and in this episode, we’re going to discuss exoteric and esoteric religious memes. As it is with all groups, the public image of a religious institution is defined by the memes held by, or rejected by, the members of that institution. These specific doctrines, dogmas, dissertations, rules, and customs are the sets of memes commonly held to be true within a given religion, and the specifics of these memes vary from institution to institution. These public memes are known as exoteric memes, and they’re easily identified and fairly well understood by most of the institution’s members.
A few exoteric religious memes are shared by members of diverse religions. Religions generally share, for example, belief in an overarching God meme chord, and generally agree on many of the lesser-included memes that make up the God chord, such as memes concerning God’s omniscience and omnipotence, and the importance of communing with God in prayer.
In Exodus, and again in Deuteronomy, the first four of the Ten Commandments lay out a basic God meme of Judaism. The key God meme, Deuteronomy 6:4-5, is known as the Shema.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Agreement on this basic God chord was so important to the early Hebrews that they were instructed to teach them diligently to their children, to talk of them while sitting in the house, when walking, when lying down, and then again first thing upon arising. They were also instructed to bind the memes to their hands, on their foreheads between the eyes, and to their gateposts and doors. These containers are known as phylacteries, and they hold within them the fundamental Hebrew memes.
In the Christian faith, the Apostles’ Creed states the basic Christian memes. This meme chord is regularly recited in unison, out loud, by all believers, beginning with,
I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, and ending with acknowledgment of a belief in, ‘the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen.’
Born-again Christians go one step further than the Apostles’ Creed in their emphasis of public affirmation of the meme that Jesus Christ is their personal Lord and Savior. Enactment of the born-again meme requires a watershed moment of personal surrender, without which one is not considered saved from sin, death, and damnation.
For Islam, the shahada summarizes the key memes that must be professed to be counted a Muslim.
There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.
And beyond this basic belief are more key memes. According to the Muslim Voices website, someone who becomes a Muslim is also agreeing to accept the six articles of faith in Islam as well as the five pillars of faith. And these are the five pillars of Islam: Fasting during Ramadan, pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, pledging the faith, ritual prayer, and charity to the poor.
Unlike these biblical Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious memes, with which most Americans are more or less familiar, Hinduism is an ancient religious tradition with fuzzy memes that are difficult to define and exceedingly diffuse.
Hinduism is an inclusive religion that allows each member to pick and choose from any number of religious memes as they see fit. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, India’s first vice president and a respected theologian, defined Hinduism as a process meme rather than a meme set. He said,
Hinduism is not just a faith, it is the union of reason and intuition that cannot be defined but is only to be experienced.
Wikipedia says this:
Prominent themes, (that is, memes), in Hindu beliefs include but are not restricted to Dharma, which is ethics and duties, Samsara, which is the continuing cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth, Karma, which is action and subsequent reaction, Moksha, which is liberation from Samsara, and the various yogas, which are paths or practices.
Hinduism grants absolute and complete freedom of belief and worship. Hinduism conceives the whole world as a single family that deifies the one truth, and therefore it accepts all forms of beliefs and dismisses labels of distinct religions which would imply a division of identity. Hence, Hinduism is devoid of the concepts of apostasy, heresy, and blasphemy. Most Hindus believe in a god meme, Brahma, Lord of Creation, but because there are no fundamental memes, one can be an atheist and still join this most inclusive religion.
Taoism is both a philosophy and a religious tradition. As a philosophy, Taoism’s memes primarily stem from an ancient Chinese book called the Tao Te Ching. Tao means way, path, or principle. Hence, the Book of the Way presents memes by which one may live in harmony with natural order. Religious Taoism adds ancestor worship and local traditions and customs, such as divination practices, to the basic philosophical meme chord.
Buddhism is an exception to the rule in that it does not hold an explicit god meme. This is largely because its founder, Siddhartha Gautama, a.k.a. the Buddha or the Enlightened One, realized his central meme to be avoidance of suffering and not worship of God. All Buddhist practice and philosophy stems from the single avoidance of suffering meme chord, referred to as the Four Noble Truths.
- Everyone suffers.
- Craving causes suffering.
- Suffering ends when craving ends.
- Liberation is possible by doing what the Buddha did, by practicing meditation.
This is why the Buddha is usually depicted as sitting and meditating. The Buddha himself is not considered a deity but a human guide, an exemplar of one who tried and failed at various religious practices until finally achieving liberation through meditation.
Another common meme chord shared by all religions is the importance of leading a moral life, although, as with all memes, the exact details of what it means to be moral may differ. However, the Golden Rule seems to be one universal moral meme common to all religious chords.
Treat others as you wish to be treated.
Morality is a different meme than the God meme, so despite the usual conflation of the God meme chord with the morality meme, the morality meme may be held and successfully deployed without reference to any particular religion. In that case, morality becomes part of the philosophical meme chord called ethics and is considered necessary for the smooth operation of civil society. Those who do not espouse any particular religious memes may still embrace a strong morality meme held in a secular ethical chord.
Despite the many memes religions have in common, it is the exoteric memes they do not share—memes of saints and saviors, official histories, and other idiosyncratic traditional beliefs—that define them and set them apart. It is the memes they do not share that give rise to the world’s diverse religions, denominations, and sects. People generally stick with comfortable habitual memes and are somewhat disinterested in acquiring others’ unfamiliar memes.
Esoteric memes are less well-known than exoteric memes because they are either so difficult to understand that only advanced devotees can manage or because they are secrets purposely withheld from all but an inner circle of believers. Secret esoteric memes would include temple rites and other priestly rituals and hidden texts that only a select few are allowed to see.
The Simple Explanation differentiates between the intentional withholding of secret memes and memes that are authentically esoteric. Truly esoteric memes are not secrets withheld from the many and only shared with a few. Authentic esoterica is information that can be personally accessed by any individual and, in that sense, is hidden only until the individual decides to access it. Yet, despite the free availability of these esoteric memes, relatively few people seek them out.
The good news is that no one can withhold true communion with the soul of God from you. This is because there are no particular memes that must be collected in order to reach God, but rather the opposite. Memes must be lost. By letting go of habitual memes, one’s governing Self unit of consciousness intuitively aligns itself with the metaversal principles embodied by the Universal unit of consciousness.
And, by the way, this phrase, the Universal unit of consciousness, is used in my Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything philosophy. But we can think of the Universal unit of consciousness as that body of knowledge, or the gigantic universal algorithm that holds every formula and every possibility of this universe in which we live. And, in the Simple Explanation, I suggest that this is one of the fractals of the Father.
So, in Gnostic terms, we’d say that the Universal unit of consciousness is probably identified as what is called the Son of the Father in Gnosticism. During these periods of alignment, first-hand knowledge of reality may be glimpsed. In Sanskrit, this intuitive glimpse is called samadhi.
When one is able to attain the meme-suspended state, this is called nirvikalpa samadhi—beyond duality. If one adopts the Simple Explanation’s definition of meme-based versus intuitive knowledge, then esoteric knowledge of God is truly available to any and every seeker at all times. The only limitation is one’s willingness to suspend egoic attachment to one’s treasured meme bundle, long enough for the governing unit of consciousness of your soul to align with the Universal unit of consciousness.
Ancient Gnosticism is an Abrahamic meme bundle that relies on just this sort of introspective enlightenment. In Gnosticism, it is thought that redemption has already been given to all. One only needs to recognize and receive it.
When all memes are set aside, when thought and language are suspended, the Self unit of consciousness remains. This seminal-fractal unit of consciousness, that we usually call the soul, lies beneath the memes. Unencumbered by meme attachments, the person’s governing unit of consciousness aligns with the Universal unit of consciousness.
This condition is called bliss in Buddhist and yogic teachings. Be still and know that I am God is how the Bible says it in Psalm 46:10. Verse 16 of the Tao Te Ching says,
Be still. Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.
To be still is to suspend attachment. Intuitive knowledge comes during the still point between the pendulum swings of breath and thought. To be still is how we hear God.
During meditation, when the mind is perfectly still, the source from which the body draws energy shifts from chakra one at the base of the spine to chakra four, the heart. In this manner, the Self unit of consciousness goes in phase with the Universal unit of consciousness. During samadhi, the seventh chakra at the crown of the skull directs unimpeded information directly through the aligned metaversal funnel, while the Self unit of consciousness presses directly against the coherence boundary, stimulating an unparalleled sense of divine love.
At the same time, universal proto-energy pours through the spiritualized heart at the core of the meditator. Now, in that last paragraph, I was speaking of concepts that are contained in A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, and in that model we have a toroidal-shaped boundary around everything in the universe. So, as we’ve been speaking of Aeons and the Fullness in the basic concepts of The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated in prior podcasts here, these toruses are the golden globes, the golden cannonballs that the stack of the Aeons in the Fullness make up.
They are each shaped like a sphere, is how I have previously described them, but in actuality, in my own mind, I think of them as these donut-shaped toruses. The only reason I bring that up is because this paragraph has just referred to going in phase with the Universal unit of consciousness. And so, in The Simple Explanation, we think of the Universal unit of consciousness as the outside edge of our expanding universe, as the wrapper around our physical universe.
In Gnosticism, it’s the boundary that separates the Father, the Son, and the Fullness from this physical reality. And so, what I am suggesting is that during Samadhi, the meditator’s own small, little unit of consciousness donut that is around them, like a bubble, that it goes into the same phase orientation as the Universal unit of consciousness. And since they’re donuts with holes in the middle, when you go in phase, your donut hole lines up with the donut hole of the Universal unit of consciousness.
And that is how you attain Samadhi from the center. That’s what it means to be centering. I apologize if this is confusing. It’s explained in depth in my book, A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, and also on my original Simple Explanation blog, asimplexplanation.blogspot.com. And this is where you will find all these descriptions of the donuts, if you’re confused.
Now, back to the reading. Paramahansa Yogananda, who lived from 1893 to 1952, taught his followers what he called scientific Kriya Yoga technique, reputed to reverse a meditator’s life energy flow away from the body and its distracting sense impressions, redirecting it inward and upward through the third eye, known as the Kutathsa Chaitanya, or Christ Consciousness location between the eyebrows.
When mastered, this meditation technique is said to allow direct intuitive knowledge of God or reality, or Samadhi, in Sanskrit. The Simple Explanation calls this a meme-shedding technique. The following quote from Paramahansa’s discussion of John 3:1-8, introduces the Kriya meme of what it truly means to be born again.
All bona fide revealed religions of the world are based on intuitive knowledge. Each has an exoteric or outer particularity and an esoteric or inner core. The exoteric aspect is the public image and includes moral precepts and a body of doctrines, dogmas, dissertations, rules, and customs to guide the general populace of its followers.
The esoteric aspect includes methods that focus on actual communion of the soul with God. The exoteric aspect is for the many, the esoteric is for the ardent few. It is the esoteric aspect of religion that leads to intuition, the first-hand knowledge of reality.
And that was from his book called The Second Coming of Christ, The Resurrection of the Christ Within You.
This next quote from Paramahansa is from his book God Talks with Arjuna, The Bhagavad Gita.
The life of a scientific yogi is therefore more balanced. He understands and follows those laws and principles of nature by which he sees God as the all in all, and thereby consciously releases himself from the personal attachments to property and relatives and friends, serving the Lord in all human beings, irrespective of their creed, race, or condition. By various methods of concentrations, he gradually detaches his ego from the senses and attaches his life force, mind, and ego to the superconscious soul. Then, by primary ecstasy, he experiences the kutathsa intelligence in all of creation, and by nirvikalpa ecstasy, he attains the spirit beyond phenomenon.
Now here is a Simple Explanation of Christianity’s memes. By this point in the podcast, you’ve been introduced to a number of Simple Explanation memes, and we’re building up a nice sized meme chord of shared definitions. We have taken a brief tour of exoteric and esoteric religious memes, and the roles these memes play within various religious traditions. We have also learned that several major religious traditions advocate shedding memes as a way of uniting with God, an anti-meme usually called Enlightenment. We are now prepared to take a longer look at Christianity, utilizing memes from the Simple Explanation philosophy, a practical exercise in translation between one tradition’s meme chord and another’s.
If you are already versed in Christian memes, then here is a way you can make sense of the Simple Explanation using familiar terminology. If, on the other hand, you are less familiar with Christianity’s meme chord, this simple translation may help you to understand a few of its major memes.
When my model speaks of the metaverse, this can be thought of as the Simple Explanation’s fundamental God meme, what the Bible calls God the Father, creator of heaven and earth.
Prior to creating heaven and earth, the original ground state of God was an eternally omnipresent, utterly peaceful consciousness.
I am who I am. [Exodus 3:14]
When my Simple Explanation model says the metaverse “quivered with limitless mathematical potential unfolding into countless dimensions,” this is what is called the Word, herein referred to as the Universal unit of consciousness.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [John 1:1]
In the original New Testament Greek, the Word is written as Logos, meaning information and principles of organization, the law.
The Sanskrit word for Universal Consciousness is chit. The Simple Explanation credits the Word with not only the memes of biblical law, but with all the working laws of the universe, including physics and math. Jesus materially embodied the principles of logos on earth. Jesus said,
Do not think I have come to destroy the law or the prophets. I have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. [Matthew 5.17]
When my Simple Explanation model says that consciousness wrapped itself around our universe and took on a shape, this is God the Holy Spirit, Ananda in Sanskrit, meaning joy. The Simple Explanation calls this joyful aspect of God the primordial or originating fractal. At the macro scale, the Holy Spirit surrounds our physical space, forming a membrane of consciousness, chit, that holds creation in and the metaverse out.
This shape of God’s mind is the Universal unit of consciousness that knows all there is to know about everything in this universe. At the micro level, the Simple Explanation describes the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in terms of fractal offspring of metaversal consciousness residing within every living thing. In this manner, the universe is pervaded by joy.
The Simple Explanation depicts the Holy Spirit as a torus instead of the more familiar Dove. When the Bible speaks of a person’s immortal soul, this refers to the Self’s unit of consciousness made in the image of God. This Self unit of consciousness is a fractal iteration of the Father’s Holy Spirit.
As King David said concerning his own death,
I, in righteousness, I see thy face. I am satisfied in awaking with thy form. [Psalm 17.15.]
According to the New Testament, Jesus the Christ was fully human and fully God. This means that the governing unit of consciousness associated with Jesus of Nazareth was a fully realized copy of both the Universal unit of consciousness and metaversal consciousness, which is another way of saying Jesus never allowed his personal will to contradict the will of the Father streaming in from the metaverse. As a fully realized, enlightened unit of consciousness, Jesus was entirely coherent with God’s will, which is to say Jesus was without sin. Thus, Jesus never accrued karmic debt.
Since Jesus did not live for himself but for the Father alone, he never enshrouded his earthly unit of consciousness with human memes and karmic burdens. Buddhism shares with Christianity a Sanskrit meme called bodhisattva, which refers to an enlightened being who comes to earth to free others from samsara, sin, and suffering. The Nyingma school likens the highest form of bodhisattva to a good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, as Jesus described himself in John 10:11. Moreover, Mahayana Buddhism holds a meme called parinamana—merit transfer.
In merit transfer, the bodhisattva takes away the sins of his flock, which are washed clean through the bodhisattva’s excess of good karma. John the Baptist proclaimed this same bodhisattva meme when he said of Jesus,
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. [John 1:29]
There are even Hindu sects where Jesus is counted in the lineage of founding gurus, such as the Self-Realization Fellowship’s Kriya Yoga sect. Conservative Christians, whose ideological meme chord is closed to other religious ideologies and non-Orthodox Christian memes, believe that Jesus was God’s only begotten bodhisattva, and that He alone can perform parinamana unto salvation.
When asked his central message, Jesus responded that we were to
Love God and love one another as we love ourselves. [Luke 10:27]
In terms of the Simple Explanation model, God would like us to embrace the information and patterns streaming in from the metaverse whenever we make a decision. When we do this, we are loving God by acting in concert with the metaversal plan, or God’s will.
Then, God would like us to love ourselves. This means that we are to love our flesh’s aggregate units of consciousness and do what is best for our organism, as explained in Chapter 2 of A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. We are also to love our governing Self unit of consciousness and act with wisdom in concert with metaversal will rather than selfishly succumbing to prideful ego.
Finally, we are to take the focus off of ourselves and our trove of memes and reach out, with love, aid, and information, to our brethren units of consciousness.
I refer to this as the Simple Golden Rule. All Christians believe that Jesus came to earth that we might not perish because of the law, but that we might live life more abundantly, [John 10:10]. Jesus demonstrated through the example of his life that it is possible to be a fully realized unit of consciousness, living moment by moment in the service of God’s will.
Be therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect. [Matthew 5:48]
Believing on Christ for salvation is the meme chord that says the unit of consciousness of Jesus can cleanse your unit of consciousness of sin and the consequences of sin. To be born again is to make a decision to lay down your personal meme bundle and allow the Universal unit of consciousness to shine unobstructed through you.
Being born again not of corruptible seed but of the incorruptible by the word of God which lives and stays forever. [1Peter 1:23]
Baptism in Christ is a ritual enactment of washing away undesired meme chords and karma so that God’s will may flow through.
In previous episodes of Gnostic Insights, I’ve discussed the differences between vices and virtues, or the left side of the meme bundles versus the right side of the meme bundles, with the left being born of the deficiency and the fall, and the right being born of the Fullness, the Son, and the Father. They are all memes, but one set of memes is earthly and of the deficiency, and the other set of memes is transcendent and of the Father.
Now, this is what is known as the Lord’s Prayer in Christianity as I learned it in church as a little child.
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Now, here is a Simple Explanation translation of the Lord’s Prayer.
With deep humility and respect, we address you, our Creator. We invite your plans and principles to inform and bring order to our universe, trusting your intention for us. We invite your plans and principles to inform and bring order to our universe, trusting your intention for us is best. We acknowledge that you are the source of all that is needed to nourish and sustain our lives. We recognize our own karmic shortcomings can only be forgiven to the same extent we forgive others their shortcomings. We reject any memes that stand in the way of doing what is best for ourselves and for others. For you are the author of this universe, and your beauty transcends time and space. Amen.
Now here’s verse 48 of the Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell’s translation.
In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can’t be gained by interfering.
People believe the more they know and do, the better off they and the world will be. However, when we drop memes rather than add them, we allow transcendent patterns of organization and information to work through us. On the other hand, when we make plans and do work according to our own limited vision and desires, we strain to get things right. There are simply too many unanticipated variables. Acting only when truly inspired, metaversal consciousness works through us.
When a Self unit of consciousness does nothing of its own accord, metaversal consciousness can do exactly what needs to be done. Best results arise from inspired action. The anti-meme of let go and let God allows consciousness to use us most efficiently for the greatest good.
An ironic problem with religious memes is that religious doctrines and dogmas are sets of meme chords. It is ironic that since it is the governing Self unit of consciousness that seeks union with God, beclouding yourself with meme chords seems counterproductive to that aim. Merely surrounding oneself with religious meme chords and performing obligatory works in honor of the memes does not necessarily grant access to God.
Here’s how the Bible puts it in Matthew 7:21-23.
Not everyone that said to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, and in your name have cast out devils, and in your name have done many wonderful works? And then I will profess to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you that work iniquity.
What does it mean to work iniquity? It means putting your ego’s desires ahead of God’s will, or the metaversal plan. When a fractal unit of consciousness puts its own well-meaning but limited plan into action, karmic debt is created. Seekers after God desire absolution from sin, karma, and iniquity. Building even more karmic debt out of ego-driven religious effort is the last thing the seeker wants.
Here is how verse 18 of the Tao Te Ching puts that thought.
When the Tao is lost, there is goodness. When goodness is lost, there is morality. When morality is lost, there is ritual. Ritual is the husk of true faith and the beginning of chaos.
In the Simple Explanation model, the Tao spoken of by Lao Tzu refers to the metaversal information and principles of organization that have informed our universe since the moment before creation. When one loses touch with metaversal consciousness, one loses the Tao’s information pipeline. And the Tao in Gnosticism we would equate with the Holy Spirit’s information pipeline coming down that shaft of glory that’s pointing up at the Fullness, the Son, and the Father.
But verse 18 of the Tao Te Ching says even if you have lost your way, you can still recognize goodness when you see it, and your heart may still be in the right place. However, once your heart loses its way, you no longer have true goodness. Morality is what you are left with once love departs. Morality is a system of rules meant to engender godly behavior in those who no longer personally know God.
And so in the Gnostic sense, if you were trying to enact the virtues that I’ve listed on the right side of that list that I often refer to, virtues such as patience, love, mercy, forgiveness, cooperation, joy, truthfulness, those sorts of things, if you try to enact those as a should out of duty, then you are not winning any points with the Father, because it is not operating out of the truth of your heart, out of the love that resides within you by aligning your spirit with God’s will. And then beyond that, once morality is lost, empty ritual takes its place. Ritualistic behavior no longer serves to bring one closer to God.
At this stage, the way to God has been replaced by meaningless gestures. And this is what is meant by, Ritual is the husk of true faith. Lifeless, dried-up memes have replaced morality, goodness, love, and communion with God. This verse from the Tao Te Ching declares the state to be chaotic, anarchic, and entropic, because when the Universal unit of consciousness cannot pass its organizing principles through you, the opportunity is lost to accomplish whatever your part was in making things better.
Coming back to Gnosticism, the Nag Hammadi texts were buried sometime in the 3rd century by monks who sought to preserve and protect them from those who wanted to weed them out as heresies. After studying these ancient books, I can see why Pope Clement and the Roman Emperor did not want these memes in the Bible.
For one thing, Logos is not all-perfect and all-powerful as portrayed in the modern Christian Bible. Matter of fact, Logos is directly implicated in the Fall. For another thing, salvation is a personal, mystical affair conferred directly by the Father through the Christ, not something conferred by preaching or baptism.
Thirdly, the cosmology presented makes clear that those who struggle for righteousness against a sinful world are not necessarily doing the Father’s work, but are caught in a never-ending war against the evildoers and have themselves fallen into a sort of earthly death trap. The role of the Christ in Gnosticism does not require belief in the mission of Jesus on the cross, but points the way to the Father instead and assures all of creation that redemption and salvation is accomplished through remembrance of the One Father and our heavenly origin. In Gnosticism, all of creation has already been saved by the Christ, a fact which we will all eventually remember and recognize. When we all acknowledge the Metaversal Father, all will be saved.
Thank you for spending this time with me on Gnostic Insights Podcast. I’ll see you again next time. Onward and upward, and God bless!