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Logos and Sophia
This episode begins and ends with samples from the audio version of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel narrated by Miguel Conner.
In last week’s episode, I began sharing an article I wrote in 2019, when I first began interpreting gnosticism through the lens of my theory of everything called “A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything.” We’re picking up where I left off in that episode, so if you have not listened to it or read it yet, you may wish to begin there at last week’s episode. We’re talking about the fall of consciousness away from the purity of the ethereal realm as represented by our One Self, and spreading out into the myriad units of consciousness down here in the material universe.
According to Gnostic texts, our universe was created when one of the Aeons deviated from its place in the Fullness of God 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, presented in The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated andA Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel identifies this Aeon with Logos. By the way, “Logos” in Greek means “the Word” or knowledge. “Sophia” in Greek means “wisdom,” so they are obviously related terms, possibly referring to the same Aeon.
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,” which is typically considered a bad thing. This “Fall” is the original Fall referenced in the Bible, not the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden, although we may consider the Garden as another word for the Paradise dreamt by the Fullness, and a reference to the same Fall as that of the Aeon. In either event, Adam and Eve’s Fall is a fractal of the same archetypal concept. In my view, the Fall represents the rise of the Ego away from true Self, as this archetypal Aeon acted on its own presumptuous thought and motives, apart from the will of the Father and the Fullness.
Here is where we catch back up with the Simple Explanation cosmogony. The Simple Explanation characterizes the Fall as simply the Metaverse having a Thought:
Then consciousness had a thought. This multidimensional Metaverse still lacked space and time but it now quivered with limitless mathematical potential unfolding into countless dimensions. In a twinkling, our entire universe was imagined in the fullness of its complexity, from the tiniest quanta through the greatest astral body; every animal, vegetable, and mineral; every element. Every thing and every function.
Once the Metaverse had a particular thought, thought became an object in the great sea of no-thought… On this day that time began, consciousness wrapped itself around our universe, forming a border between us and infinity. Mind took on a shape.
In the Simple Explanation, this shape is a torus-shaped container composed of conscious thought and its concept of this universe, which I call the Universal Unit of Consciousness (Universal UC). In Gnostic terms, this universal “border” was thrown around the Fallen Aeon to limit its influence and hold it away from the Fullness until such time as the Fallen can be redeemed and brought back into the Pleroma. The Universal Unit of Consciousness “sits” within the Metaverse and remains in communication with it, although in the case of the Demiurge it is not aware of it.
As I said, Gnostic texts differ in their identification of the Fallen Aeon as either Sophia or Logos, although they seem to agree the Fallen produced this universe and its ruler. Once the Aeon fell, its abilities and plans spread throughout the contained space and created our universe. It is said that the Fallen Aeon was horrified by what was created and it retreated to the Fullness to figure out how to rectify the result of the Fall. Within the Pleroma a plan was hatched to deal with it.
Away from the Pleroma, contained within this newly formed space and time, a separated entity with all knowledge of this place became aware of itself. This entity thought it was the prime parent of the universe because it was not aware of the Pleroma or the Father and Son. This creator-god is called by Gnostics “the Demiurge.” The Old and New Testaments call it the creator-god “Yahweh.” One of the great heresies of Gnosticism is our identification of the creator-god as a product of the Fall rather than the “God above gods,” or the true “Father.”
Because it is the result of the Fall and separated from both the Father and the Pleroma, the universe produced by the Demiurge is devoid of life. It is called the “Deficiency.” The Deficiency is populated by small, lifeless things–things that are “shadows” of those that live in the Fullness. It is also populated by forces and principalities that arose from and were left behind by the Fallen Aeon. The Simple Explanation, being science and math based rather than religious, does not identify this universe as Fallen in the negative sense of being deficient. It is merely limited by localized monads replacing the omnipresent Metaverse.
Looking at the hierarchical diagram above, the Demiurge sits near the bottom, producing the minerals of our universe. As the Demiurge is contained away from the Father/Metaversal consciousness, it lacks the life force and love that characterize the Father. The Demiurge can only produce lifeless matter—what I call “mud.” The Demiurge is able to animate the mud by means of the forces and principalities contained within the Border. A good example of animated mud is viruses. Viruses are not alive, yet they are amazingly complex molecules that are able to carry out far-ranging search and destroy missions. It is also thought that the Demiurge produces lifeless entities out of pure force rather than material. These disembodied entities are called “archons.” Archons are the offspring and servants of the Demiurge. And, in Christian parlance, archons are known as “demons.”
At this point in the story, many Gnostic texts explain how the Demiurge mated with the life-force carried by Sophia to produce living creatures out of the mud. Again, this is a religious or mythological description of the process of bringing consciousness to matter. Sophia is given the title of the Mother of Creation, bringing life to the universe. Her mission was authorized; it was the plan cooked up by the Fullness to redeem creation from the Fall.
Earlier in my studies, the Simple Explanation identified Sophia as the Universal Unit of Consciousness, but we have since revised that identification from Sophia to the Demiurge, Sophia is not technically within the Universe but remains outside of it. Sophia resides on the outside of the fractal border that holds the universe apart from the Metaverse. As such, she is pressed up against the Metaverse and also part of the toroidal flow, and it is this flow that pushes the life-force and consciousness out through the zero-point field at the center of the universal torus. In Gnostic terms, Sophia rides upon the outside of the Border, which I identify as “the waters” of ancient texts. It is said that Sophia’s “face” “presses against the waters” and can be seen by the Demiurge, contained within the Border.
My later studies of gnosticism focus on the Tripartite Tractate, which leaves the myth of Sophia entirely out of the creation story. My brother, Bill, finds all of this talk of Sophia’s role in creation to be strictly mythological and inaccurate. Bill prefers leaving Sophia out of the story entirely as a distraction from the simplicity of the Tripartite Tractate. I resolve this difference as thinking of Sophia as the mechanism that brings the life of the Fullness into the inert material of the cosmos. The Tripartite refers to such a mechanism, but leaves off the mythology of Sophia’s “fall.” However, those of you who have studied other gnostic books that feature Sophia, may find the reference useful at this point in the cosmogeny.
Many ancient Gnostic texts say that Sophia mated with the Demiurge to produce the living creatures of our universe. Another way of saying this is that dead matter is imbued with life and consciousness at the point where it emerges from the zero-point field at the center of the Universal Unit of Consciousness. Every living thing has its life force attached to the “mud” of its body at the point of conception. It is the consciousness given by the Father through the actions of Sophia melding with the otherwise dead material produced by the Demiurge that brings life to our universe.
The Simple Explanation puts it this way:
As the torus of our universe expanded, over and over and over again, echoes of the Universal Unit of Consciousness attached themselves to the particles streaming out of the center, each Unit of Consciousness (UC) with a particular, localized, point of view.
This is how “mud” becomes “meat.” It is through this process of populating the universe with consciousness that the Fall and the Deficiency is made whole—that is the job of us Second Order Powers. After that, Christ and the Third Order Powers bring complete remembrance of the Father and redemption from the Fall as they gather us all up to go home.
Gnostics can use this fresh insight to figure out other aspects of Gnostic belief, such as the relative strength and power of entities created by the Demiurge versus entities imbued with the life force of the Fullness of God, that being the true Father and the God above the god of this material sphere. The Tripartite Tractate says the life forms of this universe are the Second Order Powers sent to do battle with the forces of the Deficiency. We have been assured that the power that is in us is greater than the power that is in the world. I hope this article and the hierarchical diagram helps you to realize this.
Blessings. Onward and upward!