Tag: gnostic gospel
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Reforming Gnosticism
When people say, “My goodness, your Gnosticism is so different than what I have come to understand Gnosticism to be,” that’s because I didn’t take it from secondary sources. I took it from the original sources. Then of course, Valentinian Gnosticism is an early form of what has come to be called Christianity. Christianity diverged immensely from the original message around the 300’s and on up, when the gnostic books were taken out of Orthodoxy. Those folks that are called heresiologists are the people that went around slapping heresy labels on the early Christianity—the early Valentinian Gnosticism. They weeded it out of the official sacred texts that made their way into the New Testament.
The main book of the Nag Hammadi that I relate to is called the Tripartite Tractate. I believe it to be the purest form of gnosis. It has very little in the way of mythologies, of extraneous characters, of the names of things and the numbers of things and the astrology of it all.
Valentinian Gnosticism from the Tripartite Tractate is unique in that the fallen Aeon is not called Sophia, a female character. The Aeon who fell is called Logos, not to be confused with the Son of God, Christ, or Jesus.
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This Gnostic Reformation
How is it that we come from above? How is it that we return to above? And how do we interact with the above space, that is the pleroma of the Fullness of God, when we’re down here trapped in this material world?
That was the query that actually kicked off most of my own personal gnosis, even before I read any of the Gnostic books. I used to wonder, as I played with my dogs down by the river and I stood barefoot in the mud of the river, how does the consciousness of God flow through me and the mud surrounding the river make up my body and how do they connect? That’s the beginning of the Simple Explanation. -
The True Nature of the God Above All Gods
Perhaps you were raised in an extremely cruel household with extremely vindictive parents, or schoolteachers, or somebody got to you and, in the name of God, inflicted cruelty upon you. Then you have come to accidentally transpose their human cruelty onto God, because they told you to. But that’s not God, by definition, you see? And when I say, by definition, that means, like, cold is not hot, by definition. Cold is cold. And if you’re going to start arguing, oh no, cold is hot, well, then you’re not talking about cold, you’re talking about hot. Do you see what I mean? And if you have been rejecting God, the God Above All Gods, because you have this view of God as merciless and vindictive, cruel, illogical, unfair, unjust, take comfort, because that’s not God you’re talking about.
Now, it may be the small g god of this world. It could be the guy whose best friend is Satan, because remember, that is a small g god of confusion. And its main job is to cause you to forget that you come from transcendent goodness, that you come from above, from the God Above All Gods, and that you do have freedom. You do have free will. You are meant to inherit joy. You are to do good works, and to be happy, and to be in love, and to love everybody else.
Don’t let some evil archon, or evil Demiurge, or evil human, redefine God in such a way that you reject God, because that’s the mistake. That’s a categorical error. And that’s why I say, take comfort, have joy, receive the love that was meant for you.
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Journey to Gnosis
I have continued to develop the Gnostic theology as presented in the Tripartite Tractate through my Gnostic Insights podcast. I have also had the pleasure of presenting this Gnostic theology as a guest on numerous podcasts hosted by others. The book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, represents the current state of my personal gnosis within the context of a fully developed Gnostic theology. Although The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated presents everything one needs to know to remember the gnosis they were born with, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel goes beyond The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated to explain, as simply as humanly possible, the why’s and wherefores of gnosis.
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A World Built On Shadows
An interview with Anthony Critchley of the Stellify podcast on the nature of our immaterial, consciousness-based cosmos and the nature of time.
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Children of the Fullness Gnostic Cosmology
The gnosis is simple. It has to be, because all living creatures know and embody it. So, if my dog can’t understand the gnosis, it ain’t gnosis, it’s just knowledge or good or bad information. And if you can grasp today’s illustrated gnosis, then you will have enough to go onward and upward. Sure, more explanations are nice, but they are not essential. All we really need to know is that we come from Above, and we will return to Above. That’s it in a nutshell. The rest is a lifetime of practicing love and embodying virtue.
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Remembering the Mission
Conventional Christianity states that Jesus came to save humanity, but only those who acknowledge Jesus as the only Son of God and invite Him into their hearts will be saved. This is the basis for all evangelism and all churches that follow the Nicene Creed, which is to say, all Christian churches, whether Catholic or Protestant. This is why Christians are so keen on saving souls. They don’t want you to suffer for eternity in hell.
The Gnostic Church begs to differ with that common interpretation of Christ’s mission. According to the books of the Nag Hammadi library, all of creation will be redeemed and returned to the Fullness and the Father’s home in Heaven. All of creation, everyone and everything, will be made clean and pure and holy by the end. As they say, it’ll all be good in the end, and if it’s not good yet, then it’s not yet the end.
Gnosis refers to the ability to use reason and logic to arrive at spiritual truth. So, let’s think together about this idea of Christ and redemption and who does or does not go to Heaven. First, if Christ’s redemption were a matter of your belief, then Christ’s mission of salvation would be limited to what you believe. In other words, you would be the one holding the power of salvation, not Christ.
Does that make any sense to you? Are you the one who redeems or is Christ? Can you see how making your belief central to redemption actually limits the power of Christ? Can you see how that makes sinful humans more powerful than the mission of Christ’s redemption? Limiting Christ to your belief, it seems to me, is the greater heresy than simply trusting Christ to accomplish the mission. It is Christ’s job to redeem humanity, not yours. Once we concede that it is only the Christ that can redeem, then what is the point of leading a virtuous life? Why not sin up until the end, have all kinds of fun, and then waltz into Heaven without repentance? Repentance, by the way, means to feel sorrow and regret. Are we allowed to sin willy-nilly with no negative consequences? An even more profound question is, why were we created in the first place? When you dwell in vice rather than virtue, your life is part of the problem and not part of the solution. The Christ brings redemption and remembrance of the Father and the Fullness, one bit, one piece of the Fall at a time. Every time you resist evil and turn a bad habit into a good habit, you have redeemed a piece of the Fall. When you redeem all of your bits and pieces, you will be fully redeemed and regain your home in the Fullness. When all Second Order Powers have accepted the remembrance and the redemption of Christ, then Logos will be fully redeemed and this material universe can pass away. At that point, Paradise, with all of the love, peace and happiness that is implied, will be fully restored.
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The Key to Gnostic Cosmology
Now, when you first look at this Gnostic cosmology, it’s very strange looking, and it’s probably incomprehensible. But by the time I talk you through this, you’ll be able to follow the steps. There are 15 steps in this Gnostic cosmology. And once you recognize these stations, then you will literally understand Gnosis. You will remember your Gnosis, and you’ll understand what all of the various versions of Gnosticism have been trying to say.
One reason is that this is a pictorial presentation. It’s not just words, because I’ve noticed when reading the various books of the Nag Hammadi, for example, some of which are Valentinian Gnosticism, some of which are Sethian Gnosticism, some are straight-out Greek philosophy by Plato. They use different words, but the concepts are the same. So what I always attempt to do is to level up to a meta-level, above the words, and envision and then picture it so that you can describe it with the words you prefer.
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Gnostic Christ, Jesus, and the Lord’s Prayer
I know a lot of people reject Jesus as the Christ. They don’t even like the idea of there being a Christ. But I have to remind you that the Christ is, what we could call in our modern terminology, a correcting algorithm for our human selves, for our human DNA even. And it is thought, primarily by me, that by saying that Jesus is both fully human and fully God, what was meant by that is that Jesus shares our human DNA. Yet the DNA of Jesus is perfect. It is as designed.
Jesus was a perfectly constructed human. There were no epigenetic changes, no degradation of his DNA and its various functions. He didn’t inherit any congenital problems from his parental lineage. And being fully God means that the perfection of the pleroma, the perfection of the Fullness of God, filled this body, this DNA, and the Self of Jesus. We all have the same one Self. We all share the same Self that comes from the Fullness of God. But for most of us, well for all of us really, our Self is hidden. It’s covered over by this shroud of memes that we have acquired in this lifetime and in prior lifetimes that come down to us from our human societies, from various personal problems, and misunderstandings and hang-ups.
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Christ and the Third Order Powers Slideshow
When he prayed to them, they consented joyously and willingly, since they were in agreement and with harmonious consent to aid the defective one. 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.
The All and the Hierarchy of the Aeons both constitute the pleroma of the Son who has become the Father. And in the Tripartite Tractate, you know, you have the originating Father, which is the God Above All Gods, but when the Son emerges as the Son, but then he differentiates into the Totalities and the Aeons of the Fullness, he is called the Father of the Aeons and the Father of the Totalities. So the Son is sometimes referred to as the Father and sometimes referred to as the Son and that can be confusing. So the All and the hierarchy of the Aeons both constitute the pleroma of the Son who has become the Father. The Aeons stepped up “joyously and willingly” with the thought of being helpful to the deficient ones by bringing awareness of the Father’s glory and love.
We know that the originating source of consciousness is the illimitable Father, the God Above All Gods. The originating Father is beyond comprehension, even for the Aeons. The only entity capable of grasping the illimitable God Above All Gods is the Son of the Father, who contains within himself all of the traits of the Father. This is the Son who has a countenance, a face, because the Father wants to be known to his emanations through the Son. This is how we know that when these passages speak of the Father, they are actually referring to the Son who has become a Father to his emanations, because the Aeons are able to behold the countenance of their Father.
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The Gnostic Antichrist
The Antichrist arises after the Fall, and so it does not recognize the hierarchical structure built upon the harmony of the Fullness. In place of that harmony, the Antichrist operates through the application of power, and its only goal is power. The Antichrist does not know the hierarchy of the Fullness, nor does it come from their assigned roles and places. Lacking the Pleroma’s cooperative design, the Antichrist exists in a state of perpetual disturbance driven by self-centered ambition.
Now, this is all the same as the description of the Demiurge at this point, because the Antichrist is like his head henchman. See, he’s the Antichrist. He’s the inverse of the Christ. So if the Christ is the savior of all of us second-order powers because we’ve forgotten the goal and we’ve been estranged from the love of God, the Christ brings back the correction, the correcting algorithm, I like to say, to our original programming.
But the Antichrist then would be bringing the Demiurge’s anti-life, anti-consciousness, anti-free will, anti-virtue programming of the Demiurge. The Antichrist and the imitations of the Fullness that exist as a result of the Fall, that would be the imitations and the deficiencies, the archons, are only interested in,
“exalting themselves in lust for dominion, each one of them according to the magnitude of the name of which he is a shadow, fantasizing that he would become greater than his fellows.” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 79).
So these phantoms all represent values contrary to the originals of the Fullness. They’re the inverse of the virtues. Those of the imitation give rise to,
“fighters, warriors, troublemakers, rebels, and other such disobedient types driven by the will to dominate.” (Tripartite Tractate, verse 80)
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How The Hierarchy of the Fullness Came To Be
For each of the Aeons is a name corresponding to each of the Father’s qualities and powers. Since He exists in many names, it is by mingling and through mutual harmony that they are able to speak of Him by means of logical thought. Thus the Father is a single name because He is one, but nevertheless innumerable in His qualities and names.
Interesting that logical thought was mentioned in the Tripartite Tractate, because it is important to realize that logic is part of the mind of God. We are given the ability to reason and to be logical.
The newly self-aware Aeons were not separated from the One Who Is. Rather, their birth has the form of a spreading out by which the Father spreads Himself out into that which He wishes, in order that those who have gone forth from Him may exist as well. The Father of the Aeons, that being the Son, and embodiment of the Formless One, is the Holy Spirit that breathes through the members of the All and moves them to search for the Unknown. Just as somebody is moved by a fragrance to seek the source of the fragrance. For its sweetness lets the Aeons sense an indescribable pleasure and gives them the thought that they should be united with the One Who Desires, that they should know Him in oneness, and that they should assist one another, having no occasion to turn away through thoughtlessness from that in which they are placed.
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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.