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The purpose of Gnostic Insights is to share with you the insights that I have gleaned through many years of contemplation, prayer, and study of the Gnostic writings, mostly as written in the Nag Hammadi library, and particularly the Tripartite Tractate, which is one of the books of the Nag Hammadi. So far in this series, we have laid out the development of our universe from the originating Father’s consciousness, through the Son, through the Fullness of God. We’ve gone through Logos and the Fall, and the deficiencies of the Fall.
As I say, the purpose of these podcasts is to share gnosis with you and for you to soak this in and take in this gnosis for yourself. You need to understand in a reasonable way what’s going on. Gnosis means knowledge, and this implies thinking and reason. I attempt to lay out everything for you in a logical way so that you can follow along and make sense of everything so that it will become for you gnosis. Gnosis goes beyond simply hearing to understanding, and this is why I emphasize thought and reasoning as part of the process for gnosis. This approach to gnosis involves reason.
In Gnostic terms, as well as traditional Judaic and Christian terms, the Son is a piece of the Father and the Father is the originating consciousness, the ground state, the matrix behind our existence. The Son contains all of the characteristics of the originating consciousness in a discrete form—in a package, so to speak, like a bucket dipped into the ocean. The Son is the sea water inside of the bucket, which is identical to the great ocean that surrounds it. The Son is what we can call a perfect fractal of the entirety of the Father.
The Aeons are facets that emerge from the Son, each one different from one another, like the individual rays of a star. Together they form a single totality of the Son; the Son and the Fullness of the Aeons are identical. When the Aeons sit in perfect harmony together in a state known as the Fullness of God, this is also called the Pleroma. This particular aspect of Judaism and Christianity was cut out of the canonical texts of the Bible by the Emperor and the Pope during the Nicene Council’s packaging of Christianity for the empire. The Pleroma of the Aeons was well known to the Jews during the time of Jesus and survives in the New Testament as references to Aeons. But when I read the Bible, I find that these are generally misinterpreted as units of time rather than units of consciousness. The Fullness of God is also contained in the Bible as a more vague reference to the size or capacity of the Father, which is basically true, but it is stripped of its meaning as the aggregation of the Aeons. The Pleroma is the place of the Elect and the Spiritual Ones referenced in the New Testament.
According to Gnostic texts, our universe was created when one of these Aeons deviated from its place in the Fullness and headed out on its own without consent. Most books of the Nag Hammadi identify this Aeon as Sophia, while others identify it as the Aeon called Logos. My own interpretation of the Gnostic Gospel, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, identifies this Aeon with Logos. The gnostic gospels are religious books, and their rendition of these events carries implicit religious moral judgments. The Aeon who left to strike out on its own, is said to have fallen. This Fall is the original Fall referenced in the Bible, not the Fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, although it may be possible to consider the garden as a fractal fable that references the same.
In my view, the Fall represents the rise of ego, as this Aeon Logos acted on its own presumptuous thought, which is another word for ego, and its own motives apart from the will of the Father and the Fullness. As I said, the Gnostic texts differ in their identification of the Fallen Aeon as either Sophia or Logos, although these are very comparable terms—Sophia means wisdom, and Logos means knowledge and reasoning. Both, though, whether it’s Sophia or Logos, agree that the Fall produced this universe and the ruler of this universe. Once the Aeon fell, its abilities and plans spread throughout the contained space within the boundary that was put up by the Father, and this is what created our universe.
It is said that the Fallen Aeon was horrified by what was created and it retreated to the Fullness of God to figure out how to rectify the result of the Fall. Within that Pleroma a plan was hatched to deal with the results of the Fall. Within the Fall, away from the Pleroma, this contained the newly formed space and time and a separated entity with all knowledge of this place became aware of itself. The fallen Logos left part of himself behind. These are the shadows of the Fall. The fallen Logos in its entirety is the creator God of this world, and this creator God is called by the Gnostics the Demiurge. The Old and New Testaments call this the creator God Yahweh. And this is one of the great heresies of Gnosticism—the identification of the creator God as a product of the Fall rather than the God Above All Gods, or the true Father that is in heaven.
Because it is the result of the Fall and unsanctioned by both the Father and the Fullness, the universe produced by the Demiurge is devoid of life. It is not alive. It’s called the Deficiency. The Deficiency is populated by small, lifeless things, things that are shadows of the Aeons of the Fullness. It is also populated by forces and principalities that arose from and were left behind by the Fallen Aeon. In my Simple Explanation philosophy, it being science and math based rather than religious, I don’t identify the universe as fallen in the negative sense of being deficient. It is merely limited by localized monads that replace the omnipresent Metaverse. A monad is a particular point of view—singular points of view. And point of view is literally the way you see things. I have a point of view from where I’m standing and looking around. You have a point of view from where you’re standing and looking around. Everything in our universe, everything, including particles, atoms, molecules—everything—is in a particular time and place. It has its own point of view. Point of view is called a POV—Point Of View—and in philosophy these are called monads.
Now let’s think about what I’ve just been telling you. The Aeons of the Fullness of God are each a particular, unique facet of the traits of the Father, which of course are limitless. So that would mean that there would be an infinite number of Aeons. The Aeons work together as one organism. I generally picture them as a pyramid of golden balls all stacked together. They are one thing that is the Fullness of God. They are one thing, but they are each a particular facet of God, so they are each a little golden, glowing ball (is how I think of them). It’s like a stack of cannonballs that is basically infinitely large. Each of these facets has a job, a position, a power, a place. They are each endowed with capabilities, and when they all work in perfect harmony, they create the Fullness of God. They are the Son that, it is said, that they are worn like a cloak upon the Son, and the Son is a cloak upon them. In other words, they’re coexistent. And together, when they’re in perfect harmony, they are pretty much identical, although the Son is one unbroken unit and the Fullness is an infinite number, and these are called the Pleroma.
The last Aeon that was produced was called Logos, and Logos sat at the very tip top of this pyramid. And Logos itself was a small replication, like a model car is a replication of a big car. Logos was a replication of the entirety of the Fullness, but in miniature. It sat up there in its perfection, and it mistook its own self for the entirety of the Fullness. It’s as if someone were, for example, the President of the United States, and they mistook their own self for the entirety of the nation. They completely forgot that there was an entire nation of voters underneath them. And so they thought they could act alone without consulting the entirety. And that’s what Logos did—acted alone. The Fullnesses, the Aeons, were never supposed to act alone. They always acted together in concert, in perfect harmony. They were called a Congress of Perfect minds.
Logos mistook himself for the entirety and set out upon a project of his own, launching himself out into space, attempting to plug back into the originating consciousness, which was impossible. And instead of plugging in, Logos fell. Now, when Logos shattered as a result of the Fall, all of his little bits—that were each of them a little Aeon, but they weren’t Aeons, they were just models of the Aeons—they all rolled out and lost their pyramidal hierarchical structure. They were no longer sitting in the structure of Logos. They broke apart and rolled out. In the previous episode, I identified these rolled out parts of Logos as the quantum foam that forms the very first instantiations of material.
In the world of the Aeons of the Fullness, when they sit up there in the Pleroma, they are inert objects that all look alike, and they never deviate from their position and place. But together they sing one song together and they dream one dream, and I believe that this dream is Paradise. It’s the dream of Heaven. So what’s Heaven like? Heaven is like our world that we see around us. Imagine this fallen world of ours, such as it is, but without any negativity in it. Imagine our fallen world exactly as it is with trees and birds and flowers and plants and relationships between people. But imagine it without any selfish egoism. All work together—”all for one and one for all.” So, Heaven is like our fallen world, but in a perfected state where there is no disappointment, no death, no destruction, no rust, no brown leaves. Everything is alive and green and beautiful and working perfectly together. That’s the dream of Paradise. Logos carried that dream of Paradise within itself and when Logos fell, that thought of Paradise broke open and rolled out. But because the little pieces of Logos were no longer sitting in the cooperative hierarchy that Logos himself was patterned after, they had no cooperation amongst each other and they were not able to build the Paradise that had been dreamed of. So, the “good thought” is Paradise. The lost thought, the broken thought, is the Fall.
One aspect of the good thought of Paradise is the Simple Golden Rule, and it’s called the Simple Golden Rule because it comes from my book called A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. The Simple Golden Rule is this: that units of consciousness, and that is anything, it began with the Pleroma—they’re each a unit of consciousness, but it happens down here too; we are all units of consciousness)—and the originating consciousness, again, that’s the Father—units of consciousness are broken out parts of the Father). In order for units of consciousness to join and work together for the greater good, they need to share relevant information, they need to be willing to work together on a single project, and they need to love one another.
Love in the Simple Explanation is not only this feeling of love that we generally think of, but it is coherence. It’s the holding together. Holding together is love. When one works in a cooperative hierarchy, the Simple Golden Rule is at play, so everything is able to hold hands with its fellows and level up to the next level of sophistication. We work together to build the next level up. So for example, in a family, each individual in the family, mom, dad, the kids—when the family works well, they are working together, they’re sharing information with each other. They’re working on a singular project and they level up to the family unit and the things that the family does together. Everything holds hands with others like itself and works together on a central project. And this causes them to be able to level up, as I call it, where you could say it builds a product that benefits everyone. This is the Simple Golden Rule.
When units of consciousness do not work according to the Simple Golden Rule, they are unable to work cooperatively with one another because they are self-centered rather than centered on the common goal of the common project. When you are self-centered or selfish or egoic, you think of your own self and your own needs rather than the needs of your brothers and sisters and the project that you’re all working together on. Before the Fall, there was no such thing as selfishness. Prior to the Fall, there was no such thing as egoism. Everyone worked together. The Fullness of God is one structure, even though every one is an individual with their own name, position, place. But, after the Fall, self-centered egotism ruled the universe.
The Tripartite Tractate puts it this way. “Like the Pleromas are the things which came into being from the arrogant thought, which are the likenesses of the Pleromas. They are copies, shadows, and phantasms lacking reason, lacking light, these which belong to the vain thought, since they are not products of anything. They thought of themselves that they are beings existing by themselves and are without a source since they do not see anything else existing before them.”
Again, now we’re talking about the bits and pieces that broke out and rolled away from Logos. We are in verse 79 and 80 of the Tripartite Tractate, “Therefore, they lived in disobedience and acts of rebellion without having humbled themselves before the One because of whom they came into being.” And, “the One because of whom they came into being,” that’s the Fallen Logos.
And what is the opposite of selfishness? What is the opposite of egoic thought? One must have humility. To be humble is to think less of oneself—is to act in a manner that is loving. It is to act in a manner that is in accordance with the Simple Golden Rule. It takes humility to act in cooperation with others. The opposite of humility is selfishness.
Again, quoting, “They wanted to command one another, overcoming one another in their vain ambition, while the glory which they possess contains the cause of the system that was to be.” See, they did have a piece of glory. What is the glory that they possessed? It was the original pattern, the fragments of the Fullness. That was their glory that they possessed. Again, quoting, “They are likenesses of the things which are exalted.” And what are they? Likenesses of the Aeons above.
“They were brought to a lust for power in each one of them, according to the greatness of the name of which each is a shadow, each one imagining that it is superior to his fellows. The thought of these others was not barren, but just like those of which they are shadows, all that they thought about, they have as potential sons.” So, these broken bits of Logos, they have the ability, they have the capabilities that Logos had. “Therefore, it happened that many offspring came forth from them as fighters, as warriors, as troublemakers, as apostates. They are disobedient beings, lovers of power. All the other beings of this sort were brought forth from these.”
When we read the Tripartite Tractate, a lot of these references sound as if they’re talking about people, don’t they? Disobedient, violent, and so forth. But we’re still stepping through the cosmology of the universe, and therefore, when I am trying to map this information onto our universe, I’m also putting it onto the particles and molecules of our universe, and how is it that they work and how is this happening? And this is how I came to think that the fallen bits of Logos are the quantum foam that form our universe, because the quantum foam is chaotic, it never does level up. Quantum foam doesn’t directly reach out and become subatomic particles. It’s always popping in and out. It’s roiling. It’s just bubbling there.
“Logos was a cause of those who came into being and he continued all the more to be at a loss and he was astonished. Instead of perfection, he saw a defect. Instead of unification, he saw division. Instead of stability, he saw disturbances. Instead of rests, tumults. Neither was it possible for him to make them cease from loving disturbance, nor was it possible for him to destroy it. He was completely powerless once his totality and his exaltation abandoned him. Those who had come into being, not knowing themselves both did not know the Pleromas from which they came forth, and did not know the one who was the cause of their existence. The Logos being in such unstable conditions did not continue to bring forth anything like emanations of the things which are in the Pleroma, the glories which exist for the honor of the Father. Rather, he brought forth little weaklings hindered by the illnesses by which he too was hindered. It was the likeness of the disposition which was a unity, that which was the cause of the things which do not themselves exist from the first.” (verses 80, 81)
So, the things that exist from the first, these are the Fullness of God and the Pleroma; the things which do not exist from the first, these are the creations of the Fall. And Logos was unable to do anything. He couldn’t reign them in. He was astonished and he was horrified. Again, I have to emphasize that the reason for the disturbance and the lack of ability to work together on the part of the Fallen is ego; is self centeredness. In verse 81 of the tripartite it says, “until the one who brought forth into the defect these things which were thus in need, until he judged those who came into being because of him contrary to reason, and that is the judgment which became a condemnation, he struggled against them unto destruction.”
This condemnation of Logos is referred to as the metanoia, which is a theological term that basically means repenting, or turning away, turning back to the goodness. Logos turned to another opinion and had another thought. The thought that Logos originally had which led to the Fall is the thought that is forming this chaotic universe. Then Logos pulled back. He had a metanoia and he turned to another thought of good things. He prayed to the Fullness and to the Father to help him solve this problem that he had created down below. As a result of the Fall, “All his prayer and remembering were numerous powers according to that limit. For there is nothing barren in his thought, The powers were good and were greater than those of the likeness,” (verse 82). And the likeness is called the likeness or the imitation, because it is an imitation of the thoughts of the Pleroma. It’s an imitation or a likeness of Paradise, but it is not Paradise, and it is not the Fullness.
So, when Logos turned from the Fall and had his metanoia, he turned back to the Father and the Fullness and prayed to them to help. And they produced the 2nd Order of Powers as a fruit to send into the Deficiency in order to make right what had fallen and also to produce a new ecology, a new economy. And I believe that this new economy that was being produced is our material universe that we live in.
Quoting again from the Tripartite Tractate in verse 81, “The one who is in the Pleroma was what he first prayed to and remembered. Then he remembered his brothers individually and always with one another. Then all of them together. But before all of them, the Father. The prayer of the agreement 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 being remembered. This is the thought which calls out from afar, bringing him back. All his prayer and remembering were numerous powers according to that limit, for there is nothing barren in his thought. The powers were good and were greater than those of the likeness.”
“It was not from the sickness which came into being that they were produced” (that is the 2nd order powers), “from which is the good intent, but from the one who sought after the Pre-existent One.” (and the pre-existent is the consciousness of God.) “Once Logos had prayed, he both raised himself to the good thought and sowed in them a predisposition to seek and pray to the glorious pre-existent. And he sowed in them a thought about him and an idea so that they should think that something greater than themselves exists prior to them, although they did not understand what it was. Begetting harmony and mutual love through that thought, they acted in unity and unanimity, since from unity and from unanimity they have received their very being.” (And I refer to that acting in unanimity as the Simple Golden Rule.)
And, as we learned in the last episode, “As they brought forth at first according to their own birth, the two orders assaulted one another, fighting for command because of the manner of their being. As a result, they were submerged in forces and natures in accord with the condition of mutual assault, having lust for power and all other things of this sort.” (And this is that never ending war with the Deficiency that we talked about in the last episode.)
Going on to verse 90, “When the Logos which was defective, was illumined, his Pleroma began.” (That is the Pleroma of the new creation, the Fullness that is our universe.) “He escaped those who had disturbed him at first. He became unmixed with them. He stripped off that arrogant thought. He received mingling with rest when those who had been disobedient to him at first bent down and humbled themselves before him, and he rejoiced over the visitation of his brothers, who had visited him.” (That is the Aeons, who are helping him now.) “He generated manifest images of the living visages, mingling the Logos with himself entirely. Therefore, those who came forth from him are great, just as that which is truly great.”
And he is speaking of us—of the 2nd Order Powers. And when I say us, I mean all of creation, not just human. And we are a kind of imitation of the Pleroma now Above, of the Fullness of God, because the Aeons have come to help Logos to rectify the Fall to counteract those little blue balls that are imitations of each of those Aeons.
“After he was amazed at the beauty of the ones who had appeared to him, he professed gratitude for this visitation. The Logos performed this activity through those from whom he had received aid for the stability of those who had come into being because of him, and so they might receive something good since he thought to pray for the organization of all those who had come forth from him, which is stabilized, so that it might make them established. Therefore, those whom he intentionally produced are in chariots, just as those who came into being, those who have appeared, so that they might pass through every place of things which are below, so that each one might be given the place which is constituted as he is. This is destruction for the beings of the likeness, yet it is an act of beneficence for the beings of the thought, a revelation of those who are from the ordinance, which is a unity while suffering while they are seeds which have not come to be by themselves.” (verse 91)
So, what I’m trying to explain here is that Logos contained copies of all of the Aeons of the Fullness. When he fell, those copies broke forth and, because they were formed from disharmony and selfishness, they themselves were only able to manifest disharmony and selfishness, which in a material sense is the quantum foam. Logos returned to the Fullness and prayed to the Father in Fullness, and the Aeons sent down representations of themselves into our universe, each one being a much more fabulous original than these deficient copies that broke out of Logos. And so these organizational patterns and names and faces, that is countenances, of the Aeons came to bring order and stability and solidity. That solidity is the new economy, the new ecology of this universe. The Fullness is an ethereal being—it’s spiritual, but the Fall brought separation, brought shadows, which was not able to level up, however, it was a physical manifestation. It was density. It was material. It was no longer spiritual or ethereal. Onto that material then the Aeons of the Fullness and the Father, through Logos’s prayer, brought stability, order, pattern and a kind of hierarchy made to fit into that boundary that is around the Fall and Deficiency. And now we have our universe.
All right, I think that’s enough for today. Plenty to chew on. Thank you for spending this time with me and sharing these gnostic insights. I hope they are of some help to you in picturing how we can work religion and science together. That is always what I strive to do—is take the mythological language and translate it into scientific observations so that there is no division between science and religion, because this is one universe we live in. There is only one truth and we are all just attempting to describe it in our own ways. Again, thank you for spending this time with me here on Gnostic Insights. Onward and upward. God bless.
The publisher is almost finished with my next book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel of the Tripartite Tractate. This will be a large, fully explanatory edition that lays out the gnostic cosmology from start to finish, with full color illustrations throughout. They have set the price around $30. I’m keeping my royalties to a minimum in order to lower the sales price for you. There is currently an inexpensive, black and white edition that I published myself that is available here if you can’t afford $30.
p.s. A listener has suggested a children’s version of the Gnostic Gospel story. I like that suggestion! Are any of you artists who would like to illustrate a children’s book? Please contact me ASAP.