Gnostic Insights Podcasts
Cyd Ropp explains basic Gnostic ideas, often narrated while walking the dog.
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Pleromas-Who, What, Where, When, and How
The reason we focus so much on the Aeons of the Fullness and Logos in particular here at Gnostic Insights is because the Pleroma of any living creature is the sum total of the Pleroma of the Demiurge—our material or hylic part that makes up our physical bodies—and the Pleroma of Logos after his return to the Fullness, when he prayed alongside the Aeons to bring life to the deficiency he had caused.
“The Logos turned to another opinion and another thought. Having turned away from evil, he turned toward the good things. Following the conversion came the thought of the things which exist and the prayer for the one who converted himself to the good. The one who is in the Pleroma was what he first prayed to and remembered [that is the One Self, his fractal of the Son]; then (he remembered) his brothers individually and (yet) always with one another [which is to say, each individual Aeon in its place and position in the Pleroma of the Fullness]; then all of them together [the Totality of the Fullness as a single Pleroma]; but before all of them, the Father [the originating source from which all consciousness flows]. The prayer of the agreement [among these nested fractal consciousnesses] was a help for him in his own return and (in that of) the Totality, for a cause of his remembering those who have existed from the first was his being remembered. This is the thought which calls out from afar, bringing him back.”
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Matter is an illusion
We call the result of the Fall the deficiency, commonly referred to as the material cosmos. Here’s the Sethian take on the structure of our cosmos:
Yaldabaoth organized everything after the pattern of the first aeons that had come into being, so that he might create everything in an incorruptible form. (The Secret Book of John, verse 12)
The Tripartite Tractate adds this caution to the construction of the cosmos:
Those who came into being from the presumptuous thought resemble in fact the Fullnesses of whom they are imitations, though they are phantoms, shadows, and illusions, deprived of reason and light, belonging to this empty thought, being nobody’s offspring. (TTT, verse 78)
We Second Order Powers were subsequently fruited into this material realm by the will of the Fullness in order to restore the fallen Aeon to the Fullness and bring this material creation to an end.
Gnostics say that this material world was constructed by the Demiurge as a fallen imitation of the Paradise that exists on the ethereal plane. We think of this cosmos as being material in contrast to the ethereal nature of the originating consciousness of the Father, Son, and Fullness of God. But, as my brother needs to remind me from time to time, there is no such thing as matter. Matter itself is an illusion. In other words, there is no dualism. -
Army of Love
In our modern Christian understanding, we think of the Christ as a singular entity—the Son. This is true, but our gnostic understanding adds the Pleroma of the Third Order of Powers into the equation. Even more limiting, Christians think of the Christ as only coming to Earth in the body of the man named Jesus of Nazareth. But the Christ also reflects and is able to redeem every representation that has ever come into this universe. Because of this, each one of us, whether we be humans or dogs, plants, insects, or skin cells, has a personal representation of the Christ that we can immediately recognize. You and I have our own, personalized, Third Order Power that brings us redemption. This is the true nature of the redeeming body and blood of Jesus—not that He hangs upon a cross until dead and is subsequently resurrected, but that his fractal story represents resurrection for all of us Second Order Powers, each with our own cross to bear.
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When Truth Falls, Ego Rises
All of our egos have a choice to cooperate with the Self or to deny the Self and stake a narcissistic claim to consciousness. Since this ego of Logos was unaware of its origin as the Logos of the Fullness and the Father, it believed it was its own originating consciousness. Hence, everything that it produced was similarly ignorant and disobedient to the Father and the Fullness. In this manner, the deficiency took on an imitation of life on its own, becoming the cause of the things that do not exist on their own account.
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The Big Picture–Gnostic Cosmology
I thought today what we’d look at is the entire run—the overall big picture. You can’t get a bigger picture than this of our existence and our universe. So this is the overall, overarching flow of consciousness from the Source to us and then after we pass how it all rolls up. This is the entire run, or cosmology, all rolled up into one package and presented for you today.
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Ode to a Dead Dog
When we’ve been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise and bask in our doggies’ love.Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see. -
What Are Archons
“Now on the one hand, The word gave birth to himself as a perfect single one, to the glory of the Father who had desired him and was pleased with him. The things he had wished to grasp and reach, however, he produced as shadows, phantoms, and imitations. For he could not bear to look at the light, but looked at the depths, and he faltered. Because of this, he suffered a division and a turning away. From the faltering and the division came came oblivion and ignorance of oneself and of that which is.”
“Those who came into being from the presumptuous thought resemble in fact the Fullnesses of whom they are imitations, though they are phantoms, shadows, and illusions, deprived of reason and light, belonging to this empty thought, being nobody’s offspring. For this reason also their end will be like their beginning, coming from that which was not, they will return to that which will not be. In their own eyes, however, they are great and powerful beings, more beautiful than the names that adorn them, though they are only their shadows, made beautiful by way of imitations. For the beauty one sees in an image derives from what the image represents.”“They thought of themselves that only they existed and that they had no beginning since they saw no one existing before them. For this reason, they exhibited disobedience and rebellion, being unwilling to submit to the one who had brought them into existence. For they desired to command one another and to lord it over them in their vain love of glory. And the glory that they acquired became the cause of the structure that was to be.” “Being imitations, then, of those above, they exalted themselves in lust for dominion, each one of them according to the magnitude of the name of which he was a shadow, fantasizing that he would become greater than his fellows. Thus the thought of these others was not idle, but in accordance with the model of those whose shadows they are, where every thought becomes a son, so do the things they think about also become their offspring. Because of this, it came to pass that many issued from them as offspring. Fighters, warriors, troublemakers, rebels, disobedient folks who love to dominate, and all the others of that sort who derive from these.”
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Meet the Demiurge–Its Birth and Occupation
The Demiurge is the creator god of this universe we live in. To faithful Hebrews and Christians, the name of the Demiurge is Yahweh or Jehovah. Other world religions have other names for this creator god. Stories of Jehovah fill the Old Testament and carry forward into the New Testament. However, an interesting thing about gnosticism is the declaration that there is another God who is called the Father–the God Above All Gods in gnostic theology. And in gnostic Christianity, the God Above All Gods is actually the Father to whom Jesus prayed. When Jesus said, “I and my Father are One,” and, “If you have seen me, you have seen my Father,” the God he is referring to is not Jehovah. The God that Jesus is referring to is the God Above All Gods.
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The Fullness of God–Consciousness Branches Outward
If the members of the ALL had risen to give glory according to the individual powers of each, they would have brought forth a glory that was only a semblance of the Father, who Himself is the ALL. [verse 68]
For that reason they were drawn into mutual intermingling union and oneness through the singing of praise. From their assembled Fullness they were one and at the same time many, accurately reflecting the One who Himself is the entirety of the ALL. Out of perfect union with itself and with the Son, and by means of a single shared effort, the ALL gave glory to the Eternal One who had brought it forth. The glory given out of this perfect communion left the ALL perfect and full, as it was perfect and full to begin with, and the object of their glory was also perfect and full. [68, 69] -
Authoritative Discourse of the Nag Hammadi
Death and life are placed before everyone, and people choose for themselves which of these two they want. The soul forgets her siblings and her father, and sensual pleasures and sweet things deceive her. She has abandoned knowledge and has fallen into the life of an animal. A person devoid of sense lives like a beast, not knowing what one should say or should not say.
We are to be triumphant over the ignorance of those who contend with us, the adversaries who contend against us, through our gnosis, for we already have known the inscrutable One from whom we have come. We are not interested in them when they speak ill of us. We ignore them when they curse us. We stare at them in silence when they treat us shamefully, directly to our face.
The soul who has tasted these things has come to realize that sweet passions are fleeting. She has learned about evil, has forsaken these passions, and has adopted a new lifestyle. After her experiences, the soul disdains this life because it lasts for only a time. She seeks the kinds of food that will bring her life, and she leaves behind the food of falsehood. She learns about the light, and she goes about and strips off this world. Her true garment clothes her within, and her bridal gown reveals beauty of mind rather than pride of flesh. She learns about the depth of her being. She runs into her sheepfold as her shepherd stands at the door. In return for all the shame and scorn she experienced in this world, she receives 10,000 times as much grace and glory. -
How do we know what we know? A conversation with my brother about the scientific method, knowledge, gnosis, and truth
Aristotle and philosophers say that for something to be known, it must be true, must be believed, and must have evidence for it to be the case. The problem arises when trying to fulfill the evidence condition–what counts as evidence and how much evidence is enough. The scientific method can go only so far under the rules imposed by logic. Plato felt the evidence condition could never be met. Plato said that if one knows something to be the case, it must be inherent knowlege. In other words, it must be gnosis.
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Birds Don’t Buy Bentleys–A Conversation with my Brother About Evolution
There are just a couple of basic ways you can think about evolution. As commonly taught in school, “scientific” evolution explains the tremendous diversity of life on Earth as lucky mutations that add up to great results. Darwinism promotes the idea that mutations and mechanisms morph into increasingly sophisticated life forms, because genetic goof-ups allow the ones who change to better survive and dominate those who stayed true to form. These lucky mutations keep going in the same lucky direction until there are so many of them that they add up to a new and improved creature. And now they are “evolved.”
Gnostics have another way of looking at so-called evolution. Not only is creation preconceived in the Fullness of God, aka “conscious design,” but we are all there from the beginning because time is an illusion. -
Yearning for the Pleroma 2025
“To those who belong to the remembrance, however, he revealed the thought … with the intention that it should draw them into a communion with the material. This was in order to provide them with a structure and a dwelling place, but also in order that by being drawn toward evil they should acquire a weak basis for their existence, so that, instead of rejoicing unduly in the glory of their own environment and thereby remaining exiled, they might rather perceive the sickness they were suffering from, and so acquire a consistent longing and seeking after the one who is able to heal them from this weakness” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 98, 99).
“What our Savior became, out of willing compassion, is the same as that which the ones for whose sake he appeared had become because of an involuntary passion: they had become flesh and soul, and this holds them perpetually in its grip, and they perish and die… For not only did he assume their death for the ones he had in mind to save, but in addition he also assumed their smallness, to which they had descended when they were born with body and soul; for he let himself be conceived and he let himself be born as a child with body and soul” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 114, 115). -
All Is One–A Conversation with my Brother
The reason there is quantum entanglement is because there is no space and time. All potentialities exist within the mind of the Father and our consciousness notices one after another, giving the illusion of time and space. The Demiurge organizes the confusion of the Fall and that is the imitation. At the end of time, illusion drops away and all are redeemed into the ethereal awareness of pure consciousness.
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We Are the Second Order of Powers
These new creatures that were devised are better than the Deficiency because they come from the union of the entire Fullness, whereas the Deficiency came out of a mistaken solo effort by Logos alone. Out of this union of the Fullness and Logos came what are called the Second Order Powers, and these powers are better and greater than those of the imitation because they did not come into being out of ego and out of lack of thought. This new fruit of the Fullness and Logos was fitted purposely into the boundary that surrounded the Fall, and so because they were fitted to live within this boundary, they were able to have a cooperative structure the way the Fullness had a cooperative structure.