Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:12 — 31.9MB)
For regular Gnostics Insights, subscribe here. Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS
The Tripartite Nature of Humanity
By Cyd Ropp
Copyright 2022; all rights reserved
This week’s episode is going to look at what is called the tripartite nature of man. Now that we’ve finished my version of gnostic psychology, what I want to do is go back into the Tripartite Tractate and read some direct quotes out of it pertaining to the Tripartite’s description of what humanity’s composition is. So this week, in preparation, I did a very deep dive into two short sections of the Tripartite Tractate. One of those sections is the page immediately preceding section two, so it’s the end of section one.
This week I was reading both translations of the Tripartite Tractate that I have on hand. One of those versions is the translation by Attridge and Meuller, which is the same translation that you find out there at gnosis dot org, which you can read for free online. That Attridge and Meuller translation is the one that is also found in The Nag Hammadi Library book that you can buy, edited by James M Robinson, if you want to go to one of the booksellers and buy that. The other copy that I was reading from is the version of The Nag Hamadi Scriptures edited by Marvin Meyer, and you can also purchase that book. That one is translated by Einar Thomassen. It is helpful to go back and forth between the two different translations to try to broaden the understanding of the verses that are read, because one translator’s take on something is slightly different than the other translator’s take. So it’s helpful in that way to compare them
We humans and all second order powers have a three-part nature. This is why it’s called the Tripartite Tractate: tripartite, meaning three parts, tractate, book. It’s not just because this book is divided into three sections, which it happens to be, but it is because it describes the tripartite nature of God, the three-in-one. And, we humans are fractals of that tripartite system. The first part is our version of the monad of the Father, the Son, what is called our Self, with the big S. Self is what we call it here at Gnostic Insights; other people often refer to that as your spiritual aspect. The second part of the 3-part structure is called the psychical, our association with the Aeons of the Fullness, because we are representations of the Aeons of the Fullness; we are fractals of them. The psychical part is our psychological nature. It’s the part of us that thinks. Our third part is associated with the ego of Logos after the Fall. And our third part is the material level—the hylic.
So let me get back to the book here, and this is from the book edited by Myers. “To those who belong to the remembrance…” and that’s second order powers, because we are of the good thought, whereas the material world is of the presumptuous thought. The material world is based upon egoic strivings of Logos in particular, and we all carry that ego forward through our material aspect, so that’s called “those of the presumptuous thought.” That would be the material level, whereas “those of the remembrance” is the psychical level. That would be the psychological level—our thinking, our thoughts and the fact that we can remember that there is a Father above. We remember we were pre-existent consciousness because we are all of the remembrance. But, of course, we forget it. We get all tangled up with the material and we forget our higher nature.
Again, “To those who belong to the remembrance, however, he revealed the thought of which he had stripped himself with the intention that it should draw them into a communion with the material.”
So let’s think about that sentence. We second order powers, humans, we belong to the remembrance but also to Logos because we’re fractals of Logos himself.
“He revealed the thought of that which he had stripped from himself…” And what is that thought that he had stripped from himself? It’s his ego, it’s his presumptuous thought. Logos, after the Fall, finds himself down here below and he goes, what the heck did I do? He then stripped himself of the imitations of the likenesses. He stripped himself of the presumptuous thought. That presumptuous thought is his ego. He left that behind and Logos, “the best part of him,” that would be his noble thought, that would be his representations of all the images of the Fullness of God, he fled back up to the Fullness. He deserted the material plane and retreated back to the ethereal plane to go back home to his brothers in the Fullness of God.
Quoting the sentence again, “To those who belong to the remembrance.” That’s us. “He,” that’s Logos, “revealed the thought of which he had stripped himself.” So he gave us the egos. When we second order powers came down, we came not only with the good thoughts of the Fullness of God, but we came down with the presumptuous thought that Logos had peeled off of himself, that being his ego. And that is why we have both the higher Self and we have an egoic structure, the ego. But the ego is a reflection of the Fall.
“He revealed the thought of which he had stripped himself with the intention…” So why did he do that? Why did Logo saddle us with egos? “… with the intention that it should draw them into a communion with the material.”
If we didn’t have the ego making us want to cling to these material bodies, to this material instantiation, we wouldn’t have been able to meld ourselves to the material world. Our bodies are made up of the mud from the bottom up. Our bodies, the hard parts of our bodies, the subatomic particles, the particles, the atoms and the molecules, that is the material part of the Demiurge. That is demiurgic. It’s not evil, it’s just material. And it was given to in order for us to be able to stick the landing when we are born here into the world when we exit the ethereal plane and are literally born into this material world.
You know, we begin at the cellular level. Life comes in at the cellular level. The Demiurge has the power from the mud up through the molecules. But creatures, living creatures, all living creatures, from the bacteria on up—all the soft, squishy parts that coat the hard, rocky parts—that is the second order of powers. That is “those of the remembrance” at conception, coming in to that molecular level, coming on top of it and then through the pattern of the Fullness above as directed by Logos, because we are the actual fractals of Logos, not the fallen fractals of the Demiurge. The Fallen fractals of the ego of Logos is the material level only, but we of the remembrance, the psychical, that is the psychological, the thought-filled part—we come from the top down. So material is from the bottom up and it is demiurgic, but life and consciousness is from the top down. And that is aeonic—in particular, coming through the fractal of Logos.
So, all of the variabilities of life, even our very structure, when the material to which my psychical part is melded begins to develop from that original zygote and then becomes a creature, it’s the Hierarchy of the Fullness, it’s the patterns of the Hierarchy. It’s the consciousness of the Fullness of God coming along through, right down through our cellular level, and that’s what builds us up. It is indeed a form of intelligent design, and the intelligence is in Fullness, and we are brought up above the molecular level, at the cellular level on up, forming ourselves, forming our organ systems, forming our organisms, even then forming our communities outside of our bodies, our larger communities. It’s all according to the Simple Golden Rule, which is how the Aeons work.
We reach out to others at the living level to hold hands through free will and we cooperate with each other to build something bigger and better than ourselves. We come in as that single-cell and we have to build ourselves up into these organisms, and we do that by holding hands with others like ourselves and sharing information, sharing physical assistance, and sharing love and coherence, because love only comes from the top down. From the bottom up it’s the strong material control: it’s the bonds of the Demiurge; that stops at the molecular level. And then we are wedded to that material level through the love of the Fullness of God, and that continues our leveling up. But now it’s voluntary and now it’s through the Simple Golden Rule.
The Demiurge doesn’t know love. The Demiurge doesn’t remember the Father, it doesn’t remember the Fullness. It doesn’t know what love is—it is purely ego, it’s all about me. Of course, the Demiurge is also built upon the pattern of the Fullness of God, but he doesn’t remember that. So his version of “me” is to replicate the Fullness of God as best he can, but it’s only at the material level. It takes the love and consciousness coming from above to grow us on up beyond that.
So, let me read that sentence again: “To those who belong to the remembrance, however, he revealed the thought of which he had stripped himself 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.”
Our psychical and spiritual levels are welded onto this material level to give us “a structure and a dwelling place,” but also in order that by being “drawn toward evil,” it says, but I think the materiality of the Fall is more like it; we don’t have to say it’s “evil” just yet. But anyway, “but in order that by being drawn toward evil, they should acquire a weak basis for their existence.”
This life we live is tenuous. It is a weak existence. That is why things die. If it had been a strong existence, we wouldn’t die; we would be immortal. But by requesting immortality at the material level, you would be holding yourself forever away from the eternal level. If you allow yourself to be wedded, let’s say in the manner of transhumanism, if you allow your consciousness or your psychical level, which is Aeonic, if you allow it to be materially welded forever to this material plane, then you are being held by the Demiurge very strongly in a strong grip, and you will never be able to exit: “death”. You will never be able to exit and go back home. Because we’re from above. Going back home for us means returning to the pleroma of Logos, means returning to the Fullness of God. And if you want to be a transhumanist and have your consciousness downloaded into a computer, you’re never going to make it back up there. See, it’s not a good idea.
By the way, I know that it’s a popular motif in science fiction, beginning back with Max Headroom, that you can download your consciousness into a computer matrix and survive in that manner. That is the hope and dream of the transhumanists—to achieve immortality through technological advancement. But, I think in terms of these gnostic gospels, that’s not really possible because our Self is a top-down phenomenon. Our Self is a reflection of the One. And our Self quickly flees back to the Fullness when given the chance, as Logos did after the Fall when Logos returned back to the Fullness. We are fractals of Logos and so we follow that pattern. Logos did not allow his Self to be captured down here by the material. Logos returned to the Fullness. So, I think that our Self will not be captured, willingly or unwillingly, into a computer matrix or metaverse.
What would be the thing that would be moved into the metaversal maxtrix? It’s not our second order nature. It really isn’t our psychical level, because that is associated with the Aeons of the Fullness. We are those of the remembrance; we are not those of the material. Those of the material are the hylics.
Again, what would be captured, then, in that metaversal matrix? Wouldn’t it be our meme shroud? See, the material types, the technicians, equate our meme shroud—our collection of experiences, our collections of beliefs, even our personalities—to learned behaviors after birth. They don’t think we come in with any programming. They don’t believe in intelligent design or a pre, eternal, consciousness. They think we begin with birth. They are not of the remembrance—they don’t remember where we come from because they are aligned with the Demiurge, and the Demiurge doesn’t remember where it comes from. But we aren’t created at birth, and we aren’t created at conception. We are created previous to that. We are created in the eternal, non-material realm. We are the fruit of the Aeons through Logos.
So, all that could be downloaded into the metaversal network will be our meme shroud—the things that attach to us on this material plane, the things that belong to the material—the things that did not exist from the beginning. And, is that your personality? Does that constitute your consciousness and your Self? Does it even constitute your thoughts and your psychical level? At best, it constitutes the fallen ego and everything it has acquired through karma—through the meme shroud attaching to any particular ego. But your psychical self and your big S Self, those are eternal and they do not belong to the material realm, therefore I truly doubt they can be captured by the matrix of the technological metaverse.
And then, just think about this: what kind of matrix would that be to have only pure ego and pure meme shrouds surrounding you? You would literally be living in a land filled with narcissism, which is almost what we have now, but we don’t quite. Because we have, still, that little niggling remembrance, and the remembrance of the Father and remembrance of the Fullness and the virtues… that’s our conscience. Imagine living in a metaverse where there is no remembrance at all. That’s kind of like a description of hell. Just think about it.
And so it says right here, “so that we should acquire a weak basis for our 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,” that being the material fall, “and so acquire a consistent longing and seeking after the one who is able to heal them from this weakness.”
Well, that’s all we have time for today. I wanted to explain a lot more, but we didn’t get there, but I think I went over all of this so slowly that you get it by now, right? And I hope that you can relate what I’m reading to you back to the previous episodes we’ve had and back to these last four in particular, which was the psychological nature of humankind. Why? It is that we have a Self that reflects the One and we also have an ego that reflects the presumptuous thought of the Demiurge.
I really look forward to continuing this train of thought. Next week we’ll hit another sentence or two. We’re still working on writing the book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. This is material that will go into that book. So I hope that in a couple or a few months, when all of these episodes are finished and collected and printed, that you will then buy the book.
Meanwhile, I hope you’re sharing these podcasts with friends that you trust—with other spiritual people. I hope you begin to share this information with your friends, or at least when the book comes out, you’ll share that. Meanwhile, you know there is a short little book that I wrote a few years ago called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, and it’s everything that I’m sharing with you now, but just in a very short and easy-to-understand form. It’s only about 50 pages, but it has all of these concepts and all of these illustrations. The book I’m writing now is the deep explanation for all of that. It’s still The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated that we’re talking about. We’re talking about the Tripartite Tractate and pulling out more particularities out of the Tripartite, but we’re still working with the same material. So if you do not have a copy of The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, go ahead and buy one. It’s pretty handy. You can find it, of course, at Gnostic Insights dot com, under the tab, Buy the books, or you can find it at Amazon or at lulu dot com.
Until next week, onward and upward. And God bless us all.
I would sure appreciate your support for this podcast. Please consider a small, ongoing donation to the cause of sharing gnosis. Thank you!