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