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Cyd Ropp, Ph. D.
Copyright 2022; all rights reserved
In our last episode, we began talking about Gnostic Psychology. This psychological approach has many roots in my thinking. It is not only based upon the Gnostic Gospel as I am interpreting it through the Tripartite Tractate book of the Nag Hammadi codices, but it is also based on concepts from my own “Simple Explanation” theory of everything. I have always been interested in psychology and have been fascinated by books on the human mind since I was a small child. This Gnostic psychology is also well-grounded by my formal education of a Bachelors of Science in Psychology, a Masters Degree in Counseling, and a Ph. D. in Communication, although very little of my psychological theory comes directly from those scholastic sources.
Additionally, and just as importantly, this psychology is based upon my own experiences as a clinical therapist and the clinical experiences of my brother, Dr. Bill Puett. Bill and I have been discussing the nature of personhood for many years. This psychology is the outgrowth of our combined educations and experiences of working with clients over scores of years. My brother and I are both unconventional practitioners who have always used an eclectic approach in our work that frees us to explore fresh pathways based upon “best practices” of treatment for each particular client. Neither of us has been constrained by adherence to traditional schools of thought and past masters of psychology.
I have always resonated to Jungian psychology, but my approach is not derived from Jung. Rather, I draw from the same original source that Jung drew from—the Gnostic Gospels. So, when I begin speaking about archetypes, these aren’t the archetypes of Jung’s depth psychology; they are the original Aeons of the Fullness found in the same Gnostic belief system from which Jung drew his inspiration. The same goes for Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, which was inspired by Jung’s life-long study of Gnostic material. It was only after the discovery of the Gnostic books uncovered from Nag Hammadi that Jung was able to find confirmation of his Gnostic-inspired depth psychology. Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi, Jung learned of Gnosticism through Christian heresiologists such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome who were dead-set against Gnosticism and only wrote about it in the negative. This is a sadly inverted manner of gaining gnosis, and Jung experienced great difficulty and angst in doing so. Jung was at last presented with the first translation of a Gnostic codex out of the Nag Hammadi books in 1951, making Jung the first scholar able to study and apply Gnostic teachings from the original source material. This Nag Hammadi codex is known as the Jung Codex and it contains several books, one of them being the Tripartite Tractate.
Near the end of his life, Jung himself said to a colleague, “The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neurosis, but rather with the approach to the numinous.” This Gnostic orientation of Jung’s depth psychology was problematic to the Jung Institute therapists following Jung’s death. They chose to suppress the Gnostic roots of Jungian psychology and buried his spiritual and alchemical writings in order to secure respectability for themselves and their Institute within the medical community.
In an article posted at gnosis.org, Stephan A. Hoeller, a Bishop of Ecclesia Gnostica, a neo-Gnostic church, is quoted as saying, “Our psychological nature (the microcosm) mirrors metaphysical nature (the macrocosm), thus Gnosticism may posses both a psychological and a religious authenticity. Gnostic psychology and Gnostic religion need not be exclusive of one another but may complement each other within an implicit order of wholeness. Gnostics have always held that divinity is immanent within the human spirit, although not limited to it. The convergence of Gnostic religious teaching with psychological insight is thus quite understandable in terms of time-honored Gnostic principles.”
I share this information about Jung with you as confirmation that psychology and the Gnostic Gospel go hand-in-hand. I assure you that I and my brother have not taken any of our theory from Jung himself, but have independently shared his path of gnosis to come to similar conclusions.
The last episode began by asking the following questions:
What is our psychology? Am I defined by my Ego? Or am I a spiritual Self independent of Ego? Am I a God? Am I an animal? Am I really conscious or am I random electrical fluctuations? Who am I? Do I have a soul and how is that different than a spirit? Is there a mind involved? What exactly is the Ego and how does it relate to my body and my spirit?
This episode continues with answers to those same questions. If you haven’t yet listened to last week’s episode, I encourage you to do so. We are now on the 15th episode of our current series. You can begin the current series and fully catch up by going to the Gnostic Insights dot com home page and clicking on the Tab called “A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel.” Links to all of those episodes may be found on that page. If you start at the first episode found at the Tab labelled A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, your path to understanding will be much easier. We’re pretty deep into Gnostic cosmology by this point, and this material is not easy. But,again, don’t worry, because this deep gnosis is good to know but not essential for your ultimate salvation. I remind you that all you need to realize is that we come from above and we will return to above. The Christ is taking care of rest. With that as a starting point, the gnosis will follow.
By now, if you have been listening to the Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel series from the beginning, you will be familiar with such concepts as “unit of consciousness,” “fractal units of consciousness,” “hierarchies,” “originating consciousness of the Father,” “toruses,” and, of course, the Gnostic Gospel cosmology and cosmogeny. If you are struggling with any of these concepts, please go back and review the series at that Gnostic Insights dot com tab I pointed out earlier. And I’d like to remind you that you may always reach out to me personally by using the Comments form at the Gnostic Insights website.
Now, let’s pick up where we left off last week.
We can think of a unit of consciousness as a perfect echo or waveform that is shaped exactly like the very first fractal iteration of the Father’s mind—the monad known as the Son. You could say that our universe is populated by fractal echoes of the Father’s primordial consciousness. Here at Gnostic Insights we called these units of consciousness the Self. The units of consciousness are all identical because they are all reflections of the Son’s initial unit of consciousness. If that is true, then why are we not identical to the Son and to one another? What makes me different from you? The difference between us is based on a few simple principles.
First and foremost, each of our Selfs is an almost identical fractal of the Fullness of God. But, as is the case with DNA, although our master pattern is identical, not every facet is activated to the same extent in everyone, and the facets that are activated are turned on in different relative strengths. These facets of the Fullness are what we call the Aeons of the Fullness. Each Aeon represents a particular talent, name, function, power, and so forth, of the Son. If you imagine that golden pyramid I use to illustrate the Fullness, our unique personality reflects a slightly different pattern overlaid upon those glowing, golden balls. It’s like a stencil overlaid on top of the fractal Fullness—each one of us has a slightly different stencil obscuring the Fullness that allows a unique pattern of lights to show through.
Our particular, personalized pattern of Aeonic traits formed each of our individual identities from our inception. We are all unique Second Order Powers reflecting our own Aeonic inheritance. This was determined in the Aeonic realm, prior to any physical instantiation. This individualized pattern and place is the beginning of our Egos. Egos are all different, whereas our Selfs are all the same.
You could call this core personality our heavenly or Aeonic inheritance, and that includes our originating Egos. Even the Aeons have Egos, but their Egos are not in the least bit self-centered or narcissistic, whereas our human Egos are self-serving because that is the job of Ego—to take care of and serve needs of the material body. It is the Ego that interacts with others and the with the world. This function of Ego is self-serving but not inherently bad, naughty, or evil. Even Aeons have Egos.
The Aeon’s Egos simply identify their names, positions, ranks, and duties in the Hierarchy of the Fullness. It is their Ego, or self-identity, that differentiates the Aeons of the Fullness from the pure beings of thought known as the ALL.
The Tripartite Tractate says that when the ALL became self-aware, they named themselves and sorted themselves into the Hierarchy—and that is when Ego arose. Aeonic Ego is nothing more than one’s identity, place, and function within the Fullness. Even with their individualized Egoic identities, the Aeons of the Fullness are still able and willing to cooperate fully with one another to instantiate the Simple Golden Rule of sharing information, assistance, and love to produce something greater than any of them could make on their own. The first negative appearance of Ego was when Logos had the “presumptuous thought” that led to the Fall. And, because Logos was acting out of his isolated Ego when he overreached and fell, it is egoic overreaching that defines the motivation and behavior of the Demiurge and the shadows of the Fall.
Each of the units of consciousness that make up my body and my personality has their own duties and positions because each of these is also a fractal of the Fullness. Each of these units of consciousness has a part in the Hierarchy of the Fullness of God, and every thing in our universe knows how to do its job. Everything is endowed with the full knowledge of this universe, but it’s on a need to know basis. Every cell knows exactly how to be a cell. I wouldn’t know how to be a cell or a mitochondria or a bacteria; I don’t have a need-to-know. Nor would a cell or bacteria or mitochondria need to know how to be a human or a flower or a bee, because those parts are not activated in their Pleroma.
All of us Second Order Powers know exactly how to perform our own duties because we all come into this material existence with the necessary information and master pattern from the Fullness. Cells know their jobs and each organ in my body knows how to perform its job. The heart knows how to do the job of the heart, the stomach knows how to digest food. Everything in your body is a unit of consciousness and it is fully loaded with all of the information of the Fullness of God. But only its personal sphere of responsibility is unlocked. That’s what I mean by a need to know basis.
In the hierarchy of the Fullness of God and similarly, within the Pleroma of our bodies, we have every single type of unit of consciousness derived from the Hierarchy of the Son, from the cells on up through our governing Self unit of consciousness. Our governing Self sits on the top of our personal hierarchical Pleroma. We are all fractals. Within my body there are countless fractals of the Fullness of God, and each one of them is doing its job to keep me alive and walking around, because they are operating according to the Simple Golden Rule of reaching out and holding hands with their neighbors, and working together with information, with coherence, and with love to work for the betterment of all. I am the aggregate units of consciousness of my material body. I am also the self-aware governing unit of consciousness generated at conception. Like all units of consciousness, my governing Self came into this universe as a perfect echo of God’s mind. The job of this Self unit of consciousness is to oversee my body’s aggregated units of consciousness and to join with others at my hierarchical level of cooperation to build things.
Another factor that makes me different from you is the karma I have earned since my entry into this material world. We Second Order Powers all begin with a karma that is a blank slate of good intentions and virtue. Our karma does not earn any positive or negative consequences as an outgrowth of Ego until we are placed into this fallen world. At that point, our egoic behavior in the world creates a record of consequences of our behavior. Once our personal karma begins, the karma acts like a magnet to pull memes from our environment onto our Egos. Again, to remind you, memes as we use the expression refer to any unit of information, and the memes we resonate with the ones that attach to our Egos. Our Egos begin to look like a shroud of memes that drape over and further obscure our original Aeonic personalities. This meme shroud acts as a filter that determines what we are attracted to and repelled by. Everyone’s karma is different, as is everyone’s meme shroud, as they are reflections of your own thoughts and actions in the world.
I am influenced in my decision-making by many forces acting upon me as I approach the here and now. These forces include the karmic records and meme shroud that cover my Self, my Ego, and my body’s aggregate units of consciousness, as well as the karma and memes of those around me. Despite these influences acting upon me, it is always within my power to make a free will decision at any particular moment in time.
So, for most people, the answer to who am I? is that I am my self-aware sense of me encased in this body of mine, and I would agree that we are that. But we are also the things we love and hate, plus the record of our actions in this world overlaid upon our governing unit of consciousness. Our universe is populated by fractal echoes of the Father’s primordial consciousness, and these units of consciousness are all identical, because they are all fractal reflections of the Son.
What makes me different from you is the pattern of my memes and the karma that have accrued, which overlays and filters out that perfect fractal Self. The Self unit of consciousness is a perfect reflection of the Fullness of God, but the subjective sense of me is not that perfect reflection of God because of my meme attachments and karma.
Units of consciousness gather their systemic patterns and the universal operating laws required to get the job done from the information constantly flowing into and throughout our universe. The phenomenon known as coherence ensures the compatibility and integrity of these universal patterns and laws. What we call love is the felt experience of coherence. Brethren units of consciousness need information and they need love in order to join together and work toward a common goal. Cells work together for the greater good of their organisms through information and love. Families and societies get the job of social order and cohesion done through information and love. In order for human units of consciousness to join hands and work together for the greater good, they need relevant information, including shared meme chords. They need to be willing to channel coherence from the Fullness and they need to love one another.
Anger, hatred, division, and finger-pointing cannot get the job done of making this world a better place, because those vices are not working out of coherence and love according to the Simple Golden Rule. The essence of the consciousness of the Father is love, whereas the essence of this fallen world is confusion, delusion, and ego-centrism. Our fallen world does not operate according to the precepts of the Golden Rule unless we take it upon ourselves to enact it.
The spirit associated with this material body of mine is a perfect replica of the originating unit of consciousness, a fractal of the Fullness of God. If, during this lifetime, my unit of consciousness is affected by the aggregated units of consciousness of my body, what then, if anything, do I carry with me when my body passes away? It seems to me that the individual me that persists beyond death, into the “in-between” space prior to my next incarnation, comes down to my ongoing karma and Ego. If this is the case, then the me that continues to influence the fate of the Self after death is nothing but the holographic pattern of all the choices ever made by my unit of consciousness in this physical life. My karmically-generated vibratory pattern attracts or repels the memes associated with my meme shroud. The memes I think of as me are not a part of my Self unit of consciousness, but they are drawn to me by my karmic pattern. It is my karmic record that attracts and repels the patterns of memes surrounding my life at any moment. My own archetypal dreams and my brother’s clinical experiences with the “in-between” place, as witnessed through his patients under hypnosis, indicates that our meme shroud is temporarily set aside, but not our Ego or Self after death. Our meme shroud reattaches as we enter a new life-cycle, providing continuity of identity from lifetime to lifetime. [See the appendix of this book to read articles on past-life therapy, reincarnation, and my childhood dreams.]
That the me that exists between material incarnations is nothing but our karmic record and egoic identity is proved by one of our basic assertions that all units of consciousness are fundamentally one and the same and that all units of consciousness begin their individuated journey as perfect fractal echoes of the Fullness of God. Then it follows that I develop as a result of my egoic choices and the choices of others throughout lifetimes. I am my perfect unit of consciousness, enshrouded in karma and the memes that my karma attracts.
In Yogic philosophy, it is said that an enlightened Yogi has become free of attachments and can therefore perceive the oneness of all things. The Simple Explanation of this phenomenon would be that the Yogi has successfully laid down all of his or her memes and can therefore perceive his or her perfect unit of consciousness, now stripped from its karmic shroud, freed of personal memes. The same phenomenon is known as Buddhahood in Buddhism and Sainthood in Christianity. According to tradition, these liberated units of consciousness are no longer bound to this material world by their discarded memes. If they do return to earth, it is in order to help others by sharing love and information.
In Gnostic terms, the more we identify with the Fullness and our One Self, the less we identify with our Ego and our memes. The more we practice the values of the Fullness known as virtues, the less inclined we are to practice the values of the fallen Demiurge—the vices. And, ultimately, our final release from all earthly karma and memes takes place as a gift given to us by the redeeming nature of the Christ, who frees our Self to return to its Aeonic home above once we stop holding onto all of the temptations that this realm presents to us.
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