A Simple Model of Memes, part two

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.

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Tag: dualism

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    Gnostic Insights Podcasts, New Gnostic Gospel Simply Explained & Illustrated

    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.