Gnostic Insights

Cyd Ropp, Ph.D.
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Gnostic Wisdom Shared and Simply Explained

  1. 11/30/2024

    Free Will Is Essential 2024

    Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. Last week we finished up our four-part series on David Bentley Hart’s book, That All Shall Be Saved, and I skipped over the Free Will chapter because we just ran out of time. But this week I’m going to re-record an episode that was first aired on April 29th of 2023, and this time I’ll include the transcript with the audio post so that you can read it as well as hear it. This week’s episode is called Free Will is Essential, and essential means necessary. It’s baseline, it’s foundational, it’s a must-have. All of us Second-Order Powers have free will. The Aeons have free will. That’s how it is that Logos was able to choose to fall. We’re not helpless puppets. We do become helpless puppets when we sign up with the Demiurge, rather than with the Father in the Fullness. The Fullness and the Father allow us free will because that is essential to God’s nature, and we are direct emanations as fractals of that nature. We are made in the image of God. The Demiurge does not want you to have free will. That’s what causes all the troubles with the Demiurge and these pesky humans in particular, because we have free will, and the Demiurge hates free will. The original economy was that of the hierarchy of the Fullness, where every Aeon knew its place, position, and duties for cooperative overall functioning. Each of the Fullnesses lived in a state of joy, benevolence, and harmonious agreement, giving glory to the Father and never to each other or to themselves, according to the Tripartite Tractate in verse 86. The Second Order of Powers was created in order to bring life and love into what is called the new economy or new organization. This new economy was in the mind of the Father all along, even before the Fall. It is a unique feature of the Tripartite Tractate that the book does not describe the Fall in terms of sin and blame, but rather as an event that was destined to come about in order to usher in a new economy that differed from the ethereal pleroma where the Aeons dwell. The Tripartite Tractate says, The free will which was begotten with the totalities was a cause for this one, such as to make him do what he desired, with no one to restrain him. The intent then of the Logos, who is this one, was good, and before he begot anything else for the glory of the will and in agreement with the totalities, he acted magnanimously from an abundant love and set out toward that which surrounds the perfect glory. Thomason translates the word magnanimously in the scripture above as presumptuously. Yet the intention of the Logos was good. The Tripartite Tractate is unique in its gentle assessment of not blaming Logos for the Fall. The Tripartite Tractate says that this act of disobedience by Logos was within the will of the Father after all, and it was necessary to usher in an organization that needed to come forth for the revelation of the Fullness. The Tripartite Tractate says, For it was not without the will of the Father that the Logos was produced, which is to say, not without the will will he go forth. But he, the Father, had brought him forth for those about whom he knew that it was fitting that they should come into being. The Father knew what would happen, and the Father found it fitting that Logos should be conceived as he was and take the action that he did. The Father knew that this was the path that would lead to material creation, the economy that was to come, “So that the things which have come to be might become an organization which would come into being.” Logos mistook his will for that of the ALL. Logos overreached because of his presumptuous thought but he was unable to reach the illimitable Father and he Fell. After the Fall, the Self of Logos rejoined his fellow Aeons above in the Fullness. Logos and the Totalities joined together to create a new fruit from their union that would bring life, love, and consciousness to the Deficiency below. Logos and the Fullness brought forth these little ones of the Second Order out of his newly restored pleroma, so that they could receive the life-giving light born from the thought of brotherly love of the preexistent Fullness, in contrast to the phantoms that had arisen from the Fall. These powers of remembrance resembled the Aeons whose likenesses they were, and they were in harmony with themselves and with others of their kind. And, as you know by now, the Second Order of Powers manifests as every living thing that is on this planet Earth, from the cells on up through the humans. The restored pleroma of Logos and the Hierarchy of the Fullness conceive a new fruit called 2nd Order Powers. The Fullness is the 1st Order. The new economy of the Second Order of Powers reflected a different method of doing business from their images in the Fullness. In the new economy, the powers vied for position and authority within a limited space known as the Boundary. Here, those of the imitation who continued to wholeheartedly embrace the shadows left over from the Fall actively fought against those of the remembrance. For their part, those of the remembrance forgot all about the values of the Fullness due to the law of mutual combat that they were enacting against the Deficiency. We Second Order Powers continually battle the archons of the Fall. We are a mixed creation of life from above and death from below. The new Powers—that’s us—acquired the same lust for domination and all of the other passions of this sort, and wound up acting against itself on account of its rage. It was during this endless war that a myriad of various kinds of matter and all sorts of powers were mixed with one another, and in great number. Clearly another solution was required if peace were to enter the Deficiency. The endless war reflects our battle with the hylic or material nature of our universe and our material bodies. The life within us does battle against the non-living material created by the Demiurge. As our Self descends into this economy, the first spark unites with the material of the molecules to make up the fertilized egg. And it is the Self, replicating the patterns of the Fullness of God, that directs each organism’s growth. It is also the overall plan that directs evolution. As the myriad of various kinds of matter and all sorts of powers become mixed with one another, and in great number, remember that none of this was due to an error of planning. Rather, these steps were all necessary to bring about an economy still to come. For this reason, then, it is wrong to condemn the movement of Logos as the cause that made an ordained economy come to pass. The Aeons of the Fullness took upon themselves the Fall that had happened, as if it were their own, with concern, goodness, and great kindness. For the one who had become deficient could be made perfect in no other way except by the Fullness of the Father. Free will is the core of our being. It was the free will of Logos that caused him to leave the Fullness in the Fall. It was the free will of the restored Logos and the Totalities that created us Second-Order Powers. And it is the free will of the Powers, by way of our aeonic inheritance, that directs our lives here below. It is our own free will that causes us to forget about the Father and the Fullness of God from which we come. It is our own free will that allows us to bow to the rule of the Demiurge and dig our own graves. Because of the nature of free will, we turn to an outside source to assist us in our remembrance and salvation. This Aeon is known as the Christ. And so the Aeons of the Fullness, everyone individually and all of them collectively, gave glory in unison to their Father while praying for help for the Deficiency. They brought forth one that combined every attribute of the All, manifested in the image of the Father of whom they had been thinking while they gave glory and prayed for help. This one was called the Son of His Will and Of the Good Pleasure of the All. It is the knowledge of the Father who wished to become known. Christ was conceived in order to bring redemption and remembrance to the 2nd Order Powers. It is also described as holding authority vested in Him from the beginning and the power needed to execute it. The Aeons not only produced a singular fruit reflecting the Father, but that fruit, which is the Christ, also reflected their own individual countenances and aspects from their positions in the hierarchy of the Fullness. In other words, we each have a one-to-one relationship with a fruit that comes in the image of each one of us. We are able to recognize the Savior because it fits us and has our face. In this manner they went forth in a form that consisted of many forms, so that the one whom they were going to help should see those to whom he had prayed for help as well as the one who brought it to him. Those redeemed by the Light were made whole and complete. Those who were now enlightened felt the power of the Redeemer inside themselves being together with Him, sharing His suffering, relieving Him little by little, making Him grow, raising Him up. The redeemed were produced as an army for Him, as for a king in which those who belong to this thought share the command and are united in agreement. He also sowed in them invisibly a word designed for understanding and gave Him the power to detach and dispel from Himself those who were disobedient to Him. Those of the imitation, on the other hand, were unprepared for the Light, for they had come into being out of darkness and could not comprehend it. To them the Light came as a brief and terrifying flash, a leap and a blow that drove them deeper into the shadows of the abyss. To them this utter darkness was home. [That was from verse 89 of the Tripartite Tractate.] Going into verse 91, The Logos who had fallen and then abandoned the Deficiency he created, decided to pray that the fixed economy might attain

  2. 12/07/2024

    My Correspondence with an Educated Atheist

    Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. I’ve been having some good correspondence with a relatively recent listener who actually responded to my request for an illustrator of the children’s book. She had only just come across the podcast and had no knowledge of this Gnostic Gospel approach. She and I exchanged a series of correspondences during the month of November, and she’s been asking good questions, so I thought, why not share them with everybody? The conversations began by talking about the artistic concepts for the children’s book. I sent her the text of the book and my descriptions of the characters and the scenes. And she said, I’m not surprised your last artist had trouble. It’s quite a sophisticated and tricky project. One of the things that immediately came to mind when I saw the sample image of the Demiurge was the fact that he was coated in mud. Now I thought your allusion of mud up, spirit down was really clever, having a typically elegant and simple style. However, because this is a kid’s book, something you can give to a clever six to eight year old, I was wondering if the mud is the right way to go visually. For children, mud can carry the connotation of being dirty, unclean, and shameful. Whilst I guess there is an element of shameful dirty to the mud up illusion, would you say that the primary takeaway for kids is that the copy that Logos created is imperfect, not as amazing as the original, rather than being shameful, dirty, sinful? But maybe the mud is a key takeaway from the gospel and you feel you can’t take liberties with the ancient text. So first off, I want to mention, and I didn’t mention this in my reply to her, is that the mud up, spirit down metaphor is mine. It’s not out of the Tripartite Tractate. It is only my simple way of characterizing how the molecules bind to the spirit of life. Mud up, spirit down. That predates my reading of the Gnostic Gospels. That’s out of A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. I’ve taken that metaphor and applied it to the Tripartite Tractate. She told me she had encountered Gnostic Insights during a 6-hour drive and that it was great to experience a dive into the world of Gnosticism. I dimly remember encountering it via my medieval history A-levels. It was a joy to hear your elegant and nuanced take on what is, let’s face it, a rather involved topic. I found it extremely insightful. I’m one of those people, you mentioned in an episode, who is not coming at it from a Christian background. Ever since the vicar told me I’d burn in hell when I was eight, I set my head against all things Christian and was a smug materialist for most of my life. Even as recently as 2019, I was a hardcore atheist along the lines of Sam Harris, et al. However, the pandemic and the frightening response to it from governments ripped holes in what a Gnostic might call my meme cloud. Worryingly, even superbrains like Mr. Harris seem to have lost their reason during COVID. During those dark days of compulsory jabs and masking, et al., I sensed a malevolent presence at work in the world. I can remember thinking that if this force I sensed, ruining small businesses, turning families against each other, ramping up fear, let alone the actual disease itself, was indeed something approaching genuine evil. But by rights there should be a parallel entity working for good out there. I’m yet to experience that directly, but who knows? At the time I considered the idea that there might be two gods, one good and one bad, and wondered if anyone had thought of that since the Manicheans. So I’ve been on a spare-time quest dipping into Buddhism, Hermeticism, and to some extent Christianity. In terms of the latter, I’ve never been able to get past the typical issues of how to explain the evil in the world, and the whole thing about the mentally ill being damned, or tiny children being damned, pets not going to heaven, and many other issues which you’ve addressed. As you rightly point out, the Old Testament God seems like a curlish type, ordering parents to sacrifice their kids to prove their faith, and sending down plagues and floods, etc., etc. From listening to your podcasts, Gnosticism seems to have a lot of answers. I also like the way you sidestepped the delicate Sophia issue. Woke Feminism may have overshot the mark, however. Eve, Sophia, Pandora, Medea, etc., have been unfairly treated. I look forward to learning more as I go through your amazing smorgasbord of recordings. And I wrote back and said, I was also struck hard by the pandemic fear-mongering. It seems as though society has divided itself into freethinkers who believe in personal liberty, and those who prefer to shelter under the wing of oppressive government coercion. My orientation has always been toward personal liberty, and I think this helped me to see through the lies from the get-go. Go ahead and buy A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel if you haven’t already, or The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, which is extremely simple and non-theological. That way you will have all of the gnosis in your hands, and you can re-read parts of it that catch your attention. I’m so glad you stumbled across my podcast and had such a good long time to listen in. Interesting that you do not have a Christian background. The same was the case with Ant Critchley, who interviewed me last week on his Stellify podcast. And, which, by the way, you can look up that interview on YouTube, everyone. Go to Stellify Podcast, Ant Critchley, because there’s more than one Stellify, and then type in Cyd Ropp, and you ought to be able to find my interview. My followers appear to be largely either fallen-away Catholics or Evangelicals, or non-religious people like you and Ant. Although you and Ant both had early church exposure that scared you away from the faith. I like to explain things as simply as humanly possible, unlike scholastics who like to write in such a high-minded fashion that no one can understand them. It appears as though most of the young Turks who call themselves Gnostic are actually Hermeticists who reject the very idea of the Christ, or redemption. I think the other Gnostic podcasts have much larger followings than mine, precisely because they hold no position of redemption and salvation, whereas I’m pretty clear about it. She wrote back and said, “Cool, I will read your book. But basically, in the kid’s version, does Logos fall and shatter and the broken part of him creates the Demiurge and our material realm, or is our dimension created separately?” And I answer, Logos falls and breaks open. His ego is the Demiurge, and it does not remember or recognize his own higher Self, which is the Aeon Logos. Logos flees back to the Fullness and abandons his errant ego down below. Hence the god of this material universe doesn’t realize that he came from above and that he is only the ego of Logos. It’s all fractal—as above, so below type of stuff. We are the same. We all have a higher Self patterned after the Aeons of the Fullness, and we also have our individual ego that relates to the world around us. Most people mistakenly believe they are their ego, but their ego is only a part of our consciousness. Our higher Self is a fractal of the Fullness of God, and we all share that higher Self. It is our ego that represents our individuality. The ego, the Demiurge, is all about me, me, me, totally narcissistic and consumed by power and control. And then I explain in the next email, the way I explain ego in Gnostic terms is this, when the Aeons came to Self-realization and recognize their individualities, they sorted themselves in a hierarchy called the Fullness of God. Their identities were comprised of their ranks, stations, duties, location, and names. They weren’t assigned those things, they realized them themselves and self-sorted. Those individual identities are their egos, and they are what makes them each different from each other. Everyone has a Self that is identical to the Son, so that doesn’t distinguish one from another. It is the ego that describes everyone’s individual identities and duties. The Aeons share identical Selfs that are fractals of the Son. It is their Egos that set them apart, each with an individual point of view. We are fractals of the Aeons. We also have identical Selves and individual egos. Our egos are our unique personalities and talents. Our egos take care of us and our bodies and make sure our own needs are met. Our egos interact with our neighbors socially. Ego is not a bad thing, it is part of us. Ego only becomes fallen in people when they forget about their higher Self and its relation to the Fullness. It works the same for us humans as it did for the fallen ego of Logos, which operates on its own as the Demiurge. Our own human egos are called narcissistic when the ego runs the show outside of the Self and God. A few days later, she replied, Hi Cyd, I’ve just been listening to your amazing May 5th podcast, The Nature of the Gnostic God, which was packed with enlightening ideas. In the episode, you say that the Father is called the Father, not Mother, because it has masculine impulse, expansive and not a receptive impulse. But you later say that for this immutable first being, there is no direction, no up or down, no before or after, and presumably no in and out? Not wanting to nitpick too much here, and this is a genuine question, to be expansive, doesn’t one necessarily need to be able to go in a direction? I don’t quite have the words to express it, but isn’t this a contradiction, and is it t consistent philosophically for one to argue that the Father is called the Father because of a direction, and simultaneously assert that he is beyond all physical directions? As I have a feeling that you are painfully aware, many of us coming from the atheist camp are rather hung up on the whole Father-Son naming con

  3. 12/13/2024

    Correspondence with an Educated Atheist pt.2

    Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. Last week, we had part one of Correspondence with an Educated Atheist, and after posting that, I received an email from my correspondent, and it was very interesting because it turns out that all this time I thought I was corresponding with a female because this person’s name is one of those gender-neutral names, like my own name, Cyd. I was often miscategorized as a male coming into a new classroom or, like, going to summer camp I was put on the boy’s side and so forth because my name was unusual back in the 1950s. So this person has this sort of name that could be taken either as male or female, and I just assumed it was a female. That’s a funny thing to me.  Now, flip that whole conversation from last week, and every time I said she, please insert the word he, and now I’m re-recording part two so I can correctly identify my correspondent. He was very gracious about the misunderstanding, of course. Very, very nice person.  He had asked, “Is it possible that the truth of creation might be something difficult or even something unpalatable?” And I answer, well, that’s what a lot of people are saying, isn’t it? I think it is a message meant to dishearten us, meant to depress us. I notice that the people who believe that are not happy campers. In the end, it doesn’t matter what memes we cling to here on this material plane. All will be revealed when we pass over to the other side. He asks, “Is it too much to ask for some sort of indication or revelation or glimpse of the existence of the Fullness? What actions would you suggest should be the next step?” And I say, it’s not too much to ask. It’s what prayer is all about. If you have never prayed to the higher power, you simply find a quiet spot or maybe in the middle of the night when you’re lying in bed awake and you just ask the Source to reveal itself to you. “Ask and you will find. Knock and the door will open.” [Matthew 7:7] You can ask for revelation. You can ask for an unmistakable sign. When I was a young believer, I would ask for things expecting them to happen, and they did. Once as a teenager, I was hitchhiking up the California coast. I had no fear for myself because I was and still am an innocent, and I believe that Jesus walked everywhere with me and that he would protect me from all harm. One night I camped with strange men, but I preached to them and no harm came to me. In the morning, we were all hitchhiking together for the first ride of the day, and I prayed out loud for a red pickup truck to come and pick us all up. About a minute later, a red pickup truck came and picked us all up. It was quite a testimony to those men, like a real miracle. I realize that Christianity has gotten a bad rap lately in the progressive and atheist circles, but remember that the institution is not the Source. The map is not the territory. You can pray to Jesus or to the Father or to the Source or to the Fullness of God. They are all listening. If you pray for revelation with an open heart, your heart will be filled and you will know. Millions of people throughout the years have done just that and have come out the other side walking with God, walking with Jesus. This has nothing to do with salvation or church doctrine. This is going to the Source. I love you. I’m proud of you for opening up and exploring these spiritual depths—onward and upward. In our most recent correspondence, he says, Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions in some detail. I will take a while to read and reread your answers. I have found the Simple Explanation book on Audible, so I am going to download it and listen in the car as a starting point. Gnosticism is complex, he says, yet also appealing. There are a few things that don’t seem necessary, like a complex celestial hierarchy with different Aeons and their pre-assigned roles, rather like cogs in a great machine. As someone who has spent a lot of time with historical texts, this name and place function in a heavenly order feels like the product of an ancient worldview. As we know, the establishment church and the kings loved order and it was stressed for their own reasons. However, just as modern humans are all about individuality, at times overly, ancient societies were obsessed with kingship and order. So just as it is a feature of New Age religions that it’s all about individual Self-expression, does it follow that the writer of the Tripartite Tractate was reflecting the perception of a rigid order and hierarchy in heaven? This business of a complex organizational structure in heaven with angels, archangels and the rest of it kind of feels like the product of a human imagination. Is that a fair point? He goes on to say, however, putting that aside, all of the key questions that have made me rule out religions in the past, the cruel concept of original sin in Christianity and likewise karmic punishing people for past life mistakes in Hinduism, Buddhism are thankfully missing in your version of Gnosticism, which is a huge positive. It’s elegant to universal salvation, having a fall that explains suffering, but not a fall by humans. To my skeptical agnostic ears, key aspects of your Gnostic reformation have the ring of truth. The fractal stuff is fascinating, too. I don’t come from a science background, so I’ll probably take your word on that. So here’s a question that may put my mind at rest. Given that my spider senses are tingling, telling me some of the concepts in the Tripartite Tractate sound a bit historically located and hence man-made, would it be fair to say that the words of the Tripartite Tractate are a version of the universal truth, recorded by a fallible human hand, with possibly a few simplifications and misinterpretations? Or do you believe that every word in the book is divine and immutable? No need to answer in a hurry. Don’t let me distract you, but I’d be intrigued to find out at some point. Okay, so here’s my latest answer. The hierarchy isn’t about power, haves and have-nots. It’s about jobs that need to be done and the relationships among neighbors. Think of the Aeons as cells in your body or cells in a slime mold. Every function and every job is necessary and equally important. The brain is no more important than your skin, etc. However, the king of your body is your self-aware identity. You need to be in control of your body or else some other organ will attempt to take charge. It is the natural order of things. When people don’t pay attention to their body parts, the body parts take control, and the next thing you know, you’re addicted to something or another. And I didn’t put this in my email because I was in a hurry, but then I was thinking afterward of the best answer to the hierarchy question. Remember, the Aeons self-sorted themselves into this hierarchy. They were not placed there. They were not made subordinate to others or above others by some higher ruling power. They self-sorted. It makes a point of saying that in the Tripartite Tractate. And what they sorted themselves into were functions. Their place, their function, their duties, their neighbors, their names for themselves. They gave themselves their names. And the reason it’s hierarchical is because the higher the fewer. The higher the fewer is a basic Gnostic precept. And the reason is this. In my concept of how things go together and of how the Fullness of God works and how our bodies work, it’s part of A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. The most basic parts of the material universe are the subatomic particles and the particles. And they level up to make atoms. And the atoms hold hands with one another and they level up to make molecules. And the molecules hold hands with one another and they level up to make elements. Now, think it through. There’s more atoms than there are molecules. There’s more molecules than there are elements. And so every time you go up a level, there’s fewer. So it’s naturally building the higher the fewer. So if you think of your family and, say for example that you’ve got four brothers and sisters and a mom and dad—a nice big family. Well, there’s six of you, right? But you hold hands, cooperate with one another according to the Simple Golden Rule, and what do you make? You make one family. So there were six and now it’s leveled up to one. So the higher—that is the family—the fewer. And that is why a hierarchy looks like a hierarchy. It’s not a matter of thinking that the ones lower down are less important or not worthy. It’s that they are the basic foundations that make everything else possible. As a side note, the Demiurge is in charge of that material level, the subatomic particles up through the elements and the mineral aggregations. And then the life comes down from above. The Demiurge controls matter through bonds. Matter has no free will. The life, love, and consciousness comes down from above during conception and creates the spark of life that then changes it from mud, mud up, that’s the material level of the Demiurge, the mud, to the spirit down. The spirit is what gives life and love and causes the molecules to be able to walk around in the form of our bodies. All living things bring consciousness and love into the Fallen world at conception. Finally he asks whether or not the Tripartite Tractate is sacred gospel or immutable truth, divine and immutable. I answered that obviously the Tripartite Tractate was written by a man who was historically contextually located. But I’ve found that the Tripartite Tractate is the best Gnostic text to explain these things. Now, I myself, Dr. Cyd Ropp, I am also historically contextually located as well. When I write The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, or A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, it is also my rewording the truth that has come to me. If once you discover the Gnosis

  4. 12/18/2024

    Gnostic Christmas–Alleluia!

    This post was very popular last year, so I’m repeating it for all of us. Merry Christmas! Today, we’re going to look at the nature of the Christ—the who, what, why of Christ. Most people are familiar with seeing the baby Jesus in the manger and that’s what we celebrate at Christmas time, the birth of the Christ on Earth in the form of a human. But the Christ is an ethereal creature that predates the birth of Jesus. Jesus and the Christ aren’t exactly the same, although Jesus was fully Christ. The Christ predates the birth of the human known as Jesus. So, let’s learn more about the Christ and why the Christ figure is so essential to us Second Order Powers.  Gnosticism is the forerunner of the modern Christian faith. As such, a better understanding of the figure of the Christ is essential to understanding both Gnosticism and Christianity. The cosmology that I talk about here on the podcast was well known to Jesus and his original followers, but it was cut out of Christianity about 1700 years ago by the Nicene Council, at the urging of the Pope and the Roman Emperor. Because this theology was subtracted from orthodox Christianity, many of the ideas of gnostic cosmology sound odd and unfamiliar to modern churchgoers. Some of the ideas may even sound heretical at first glance due to their unfamiliarity. Yet the theology contained in these early scriptures makes sense of so many puzzling aspects of Christian faith that they must be reexamined. I’m confident that once you understand gnostic Christianity, you will better understand your relationship with God. According to gnostic cosmology as laid out in the Nag Hammadi, we humans and all other forms of life on Earth, from bacteria and eukaryotes on up, are the fruit of the Pleroma and Logos. We Second Order Powers find ourselves locked in a never-ending battle for dominion over the Earth with forces that were generated as a result of the Fall. Due to the law of mutual combat, we have forgotten our origin in the Fullness and our mission to bring love and harmony to creation and have instead taken on many of the characteristics of the shadows of the Deficiency. The Second Order Powers are locked in a never-ending war with the Deficiency. Here below, we constantly battle the physical forces of death and entropy, as well as the spiritual forces of vice, sin, delusion and despair. In order to restore memory and reason to the Second Order Powers, the Aeons of the Fullness, every one of them individually and all of them collectively, gave glory in unison to their Father while praying for a helper to bring peace to the Deficiency and forgiveness to Logos. Out of this focused prayer, a unique fruit emerged, one that contained all of the capabilities and powers of the Fullness, along with all of the love and eternal qualities of the Father. The singular fruit of the Fullness and the Father is known by various names: the Christ, the Savior and the Redeemer, the Advocate, the Light, and the Beloved. In Simple Explanation terms, the Christ is a perfect and full fractal of the Father and the Son, all rolled-up into one perfect form. Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was both perfect man and perfect God incarnate. Christian Gnostics believed the same. Here is a more complete explanation of who Jesus was. It’s said that Jesus was conceived without sin because he carried within his body the perfection of man and God. This would mean that Jesus was perfect and true to the original DNA formula for humanity. Hence the importance of the virgin birth that then imparted that perfect DNA to the baby. Jesus was also without negative karma attached to his soul, as his soul was the soul of God. The components of Jesus’s body were also without sin, as the cells and flesh that became Jesus were in fact the Aeons of the Fullness incarnate. As Colossians 1:19 says, “For God was pleased to have all his Fullness dwell in him and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on Earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.” This one sentence from Colossians contains the entire Christian Gnostic Gospel. Because Jesus brought along the entire Fullness of the Pleroma when he incarnated, every aspect of the Father and Son came to material instantiation on Earth. In this manner, the eternal God experienced the finite life of us Second Order Powers and all of the struggle between birth and death that plague us all. Here is how the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi scriptures describes this process: “As for those of the shadow, Logos separated himself from them in every way, since they fight against him and are not at all humble before him. The stumbling which happened to the Aeons of the Father was brought to them as if it were their own, in a careful and non-malicious and immensely sweet way. It was brought to the Fullnesses so that they might be instructed about the Deficiency by the single One, from whom alone they all received strength to eliminate the defects. 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. Then, from the harmony, in a joyous willingness which had come into being, they brought forth the fruit which was a begetting from the harmony, a unity, a possession of the Fullnesses, revealing the countenance of the Father of whom the Aeons thought as they gave glory and prayed for help for their brother with a wish in which the Father counted himself with them. Thus it was willingly and gladly that they brought forth the fruit. And he made manifest the agreement of the revelation of his union with them, which was his beloved Son, but the Son in whom the Fullnesses are pleased to put himself on them as a garment through which he gave perfection to the defective one and gave confirmation to those who are perfect, the One who is properly called Savior and the Redeemer and the Well-pleasing One, and the Beloved, the One to whom prayers have been offered, and the Christ and the light of those appointed in accordance with the ones from whom he was brought forth, since he has become the names of the positions which were given to him. Yet what other name may be applied to him except the Son, as we have previously said, since he is the knowledge of the Father whom he wanted them to know? Not only did the Aeons generate the countenance of the Father to whom they gave praise, but also they generated their own, for the Aeons who give glory, generated their countenance and their face. They came forth in a multifaceted form in order that the one to whom help was to be given might see those to whom he had prayed for help. He also sees the One who gave it to him.” (That is from the Tripartite Tractate sections 85 through 87.) So you see, the mission of the Christ, as stated in Colossians, was to redeem all of creation, including the fallen Aeon who had founded our material universe. Because the Christ came to redeem everyone, the body of Jesus came to Earth with every one of the Fullnesses on board. For every fallen spirit, the Christ brought forth their own personal and recognizable Savior. Redemption has already taken place. It is up to the Second Order Powers and the one who fell to recognize and accept that redemption in order to complete the mission of the Christ. In Simple Explanation terms, the Christ brought the correcting formula for all of our spirits and souls, each unique and personally formulated to meet our individual needs. The baptism of the Christ washes away the mental and spiritual confusion brought on by the endless war with shadows of the Fall. Gnostics are apocalyptic, as are Christians. Gnostics believe that some day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus, the Christ, is Lord. Repentance and redemption comes harder for some than for others. Some souls take more time to recognize and remember. Ultimately, though, there comes a day of reckoning, for the Father will not be denied forever. There will soon come a day when the Deficiency ends. On that day, a new economy will unite Heaven and Earth, and all souls will find their joyful place in Paradise. The only forms banished to the outer darkness will be the shadows and phantoms of the Fall, which did not exist within the Father’s consciousness from the beginning. These shadows are not real and they will have no home with us in Paradise. Now here’s a gnostic perspective of Jesus on the cross. One of the central themes of the Christian faith is the death of Jesus on the cross. Christians the world over focus on the body of Jesus hanging on the cross, and I’ve often wondered, why this fixation of Jesus on the cross? Why is the crucifix the focal point of every church and altar? Why do people wear the cross as jewelry or hang a crucifix in their bedroom? The obvious answer Christians give is that without the cross, Jesus could not have saved humanity from sin, for he bore our sins into the grave with his death and they were washed away with his resurrection from the dead. Praise be to God, but why the cross? If Jesus had been stoned to death or drowned or beaten or thrown from a high tower, would we still feel such affinity for the stone, a lake, a club or a roof? I don’t think so. I think there is something very special about the shape of the cross itself. I ask this question because Jesus never said, I’m soon to pass on from this world, and I want you to focus on my body hanging on the cross as I take on the sins of the world. And yet, that’s what people do, as if that were the entire point of the Gospel. As far as I can tell, Jesus did not ask for his death and resurrection to be the focal point of worship. What Jesus actually said w

  5. 12/28/2024

    Treasures of Heaven

    Matthew 6:19 Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. Lately, people have been asking me to translate Bible verses—to give my Gnostic Gospel version of familiar Bible verses. And, boy, I would love to do that. I mean, I could read for you the entire New Testament from end to end and translate it into the Gnostic Gospel, and perhaps that would be a good book project to do. I have hesitated doing such a thing here on Gnostic Insights because I don’t want people to misunderstand and think that this is just another Christian radio program. There are particular differences between the Gnostic Gospel and conventional Christianity, yet there is more in common with Christianity when you read it with an open heart and an open mind. So this morning I’ll look at some very famous Bible verses out of the book of Matthew, and this is when Jesus was preaching to the multitude. This is out of a long speech by Jesus. By the way, I really have been enjoying that television series called The Chosen. If you’ve never seen The Chosen, they have their own app. You can download it, for example, on Roku, the Chosen app, and then you can watch all of the episodes. You can catch episodes here and there on various platforms. They’re all really good, and it is yet another depiction of the life of Jesus and the disciples. But this television series, which has four seasons so far, and I think they’re going to go to five seasons, they have a lot of backstory and a lot of historical settings and things that aren’t particularly quoted out of the Bible, yet they are true. And like any screenplay that has been adapted from a book, the narrative isn’t exactly the same as the books. Sometimes characters are deepened or collapsed with other characters in order to carry the story forward, and that is the spirit by which The Chosen has been written, which brings criticism from some evangelical Christians. They don’t like the fact that The Chosen “makes up stuff.” But I feel that that is actually immaterial, because the important part carries on. The important truth of the Scripture is in there and brought to life in such a way that you can relate to it, or you can watch it like a television show or a movie. It’s a very gripping story. So I recommend that you look up The Chosen. You might enjoy it. Now let’s look at some Bible verses out of the book of Matthew, and as I like to do, I am using the translation by David Bentley Hart, which is what he calls a pitilessly accurate translation. He doesn’t change the translation of the New Testament the way so many versions of the Bible do. So let’s look at this. This is out of chapter 6, verse 19. Do not store up treasures for yourself on the earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves penetrate by digging and stealing. Rather, store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves neither penetrate by digging nor steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. Now this verse contrasts materialism and spirituality on a practical level. We live in a very affluent age, particularly if you’re living in one of the western countries. We have, for the last 100, 200 years at least, been living very high on the hog, as if we’re all kings and queens. And we have treasures. We have to have this, and we have to have that. We see things advertised, and we immediately have to get it. We photograph those QR codes off the screen, and bingo, a week later we have the product. And people who don’t know God, people who are cut off from their spiritual aspect, which we here at Gnostic Insights call your Self, that’s the part of us that we all share in common. That is the Fullness of God that dwells within us, the Self. But we all also have an ego, and it’s our ego that’s particular to us—that’s our name and address and all of the memes we cling to that give us meaning in our life. And when we soak up advertising or soak up social media and become envious of what we think other people have or what other people are enjoying, and then we want it for ourselves, that’s egoic. That’s your ego taking care of your personal needs. But the ego overreaches. We don’t need all the things we think we need or want. So here we are living in our homes or our apartments, surrounded by all of this material wealth, by all these doodads and gadgets—buy this equipment and that clothing and this kind of makeup and that kind of food. We’re just surrounding ourselves with things that we have taken in because other people told us we need to. That’s the purpose of advertising, to build up desire in you, to build up a need and a desire so that you will eventually take it in. And that’s how people make money. That isn’t the way to acquire things. That is a wrong path. And the reason it’s the wrong path is because material objects can never fill the aching and the need that’s in the human heart. We are hardwired to seek the transcendent. People who do not realize this, who have not remembered any of their gnosis at this point, they think it’s all made up. They think it’s all fairy tales. So many times I’ve heard people tell me, oh, that’s just a fairy tale. That’s just what you think. You can’t prove that it’s true. Well, the thing is, all of us who have begun to walk through the path of gnosis to find the truth of the ethereal, we all are treading that same path. And that’s another famous Bible quote: The way is wide that leads to destruction, but the path to God is narrow. Now, that one’s often interpreted to mean that there’s only one way to God, one way, and that one way, the Christians say, is Jesus Christ. The Gnostic gospel also believes there’s only one path, one way, but that path is gnosis. And Jesus points the way to the gnosis, and eventually we will all accept the redemption of the Christ, because you can’t make it all the way back to the ethereal plane carrying around these bundles of memes that we’ve acquired here on Earth. These attachments, these material possessions, they weigh us down like Marley’s chains in The Christmas Carol by Dickens. There is only one way to the ethereal plane, and all of us who are on that Gnostic path, we find ourselves having the same experiences. We do share visions. We do have the same expectation of heaven. We begin to remember the place that we came from, because according to the Gnostic gospel, and it is my contention, that the reason we all have a foretaste—and when I say all, I mean all cultures—everyone around the Earth has a foretaste, an expectation of what we call heaven or paradise. Now, how could we all be sharing that same expectation? It’s because that’s where we come from. We are the children of the Aeons in the pleroma of the Fullness of God, also known as paradise. When you see the Fullness of God in the New Testament, it’s the pleroma of God, which is everything that’s possible. It’s not just that God’s a big, great guy, and he’s so huge and ungraspable—the fullness. That isn’t what fullness means. Fullness is differentiations of the Source. The Fullness is every variable that can possibly be that was ever imagined by that great, illimitable Source, by the Father, broken out into its distinctive parts. And those parts are the aeons, and the parts with the personalities are what we typically call angels. So we all have this foretaste of heaven because we came from heaven. We have earthly parents, but we also have what we could call heavenly parents, because we are the children of the Aeons of the Fullness of God. And they sent us down here into this material world in order to help redeem the world, in order to remind the world of paradise, particularly to remind the Demiurge of paradise, because it’s the Demiurge, the forgetful god of the Gnostics, the creator of this heaven and earth. By heaven, I mean the sky, I mean the stars. Everything that is within the envelope or the boundary of the cosmos was created by the Demiurge. And the Demiurge doesn’t remember where he came from or where it came from. And the idea was that the Fullness sent down and populated this otherwise dead cosmos, because the Demiurge only produces material, it can’t produce life because it doesn’t remember what the life is. All of the life, all of the light, all of the consciousness, all of the love comes down that narrow path into this material world from above. So that’s what it means by “the way is wide that leads to destruction.” That’s if you’re standing here looking around you from left to right, and through history of this material world—that’s all death and destruction because the life doesn’t come from the bottom up. Consciousness doesn’t bubble up out of the mud. It flows down from above, and we carry it into this material universe with ourselves when we’re born. So the tragedy, of course, is that given a few years here on earth, we forget that we are the emissaries of the Fullness of God, and we think that we are mud creatures rising up out of the material world. So we forget our mission, which was to bring consciousness, and love, and redemption to the Demiurge. We’re here to remind him of life, and love, and the Father, and the Source, and the Aeons above. We get all bogged down by these material possessions, by these treasures we store up for us on earth, and we think the meaning is in the treasure. We think, oh, I’ll only be happy if I just get a Bowflex. Oh, I’ll be so happy if I wear this particular color lipstick. Oh, look at my selfie. Look at my selfie. Oh, aren’t I cute? Aren’t I neat? That’s wrongheaded. That will not bring happiness. That’s a delusion. Happiness can’t come from the material because the material is void. The material is empty. The material cannot generate consciousness. This is why I doubt that artificial intelligence will actually r

  6. 01/04/2025

    Virgin Birth–The Infancy Gospel of James

    The date of this recording was Christmas Eve, 12-24-2021. I’m repeating this episode now because although not particularly “gnostic,” it does shed light on the birth of Jesus Christ. And 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 a, we could call it in our modern terminology, a correcting algorithm for our human selves, for our human DNA, even. And it is thought, primarily by me, and I’m sure other people probably share this point of view, 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 was 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. Particularly, we have been under attack by the Demiurge and the archons of the Demiurge. The Demiurge does not care for humans. Humans challenge the authority of the Demiurge, because we claim to be from the Fullness of God. And the Demiurge, of course, believes that he is the Fullness of God. He does not acknowledge the God Above All Gods or the Pleroma above, because he has a case of amnesia at the moment. Eventually, everything will be redeemed by the Christ. That was the purpose of the Christ. And the Christ pre-exists Jesus of Nazareth. The Christ is not exactly the same as Jesus. The Christ is a supernatural power that lives up there in the Pleroma. The Christ is the Fullness of God plus the willpower of the Son with the blessing of the Father. So the Christ embodies the entire lineage of the Holy Spirit without interruption. And the Christ was sent down to this Earth, presumably in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, in order to implant this correction, this correcting algorithm, onto us humans who have fallen away from the perfection of our original design, either spiritually, because of the archonic attacks and the memes that we hold, or physically, because of our human DNA that is shared with the body of the Jesus. And that’s why Jesus had to have a virgin birth, because Mary was the vessel. However, the Fullness of God was the parental unit that gave this perfect human to the Earth for correction and assistance. Earlier in the year, I heard an interview with a very interesting woman named Marguerite Mary Rigoglioso, and she has written a book called The Mystery Tradition of Miraculous Conception, Mary and the Lineage of Virgin Births. And what Marguerite does in this book is show that there was a tradition of virgin birth—that actually Mary was not the first and only woman on Earth to give birth to a baby with no male semen involved. And in this book of hers, she goes through various other religious writings from various traditions and shows how such a thing is possible. This idea of virgin birth—there’s actually a scientific name for it. It’s called parthenogenesis. And it is not a fairy tale. As it turns out, creatures on Earth can have parthenogenesis. Animals in zoos have been observed to become pregnant and have babies without any male creature around. So there is such a thing as parthenogenesis, and this is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about Mary and Jesus. Now, since it’s Christmas, I thought I would just go ahead and read to you out of one of the forbidden Gospels that didn’t make the cut when the Nicene Council put together the conventional Christianity as we know it today. They left a lot out. And this Gospel, which deals with the virgin birth, is called The Infancy Gospel of James. Marguerite has put it as an appendix at the back of her book, and so I’m going to read to you directly from the Gospel of James, the Infancy Gospel of James here, so we can have another Christmas story that’s kind of similar but kind of different from the ones that are handed down to us in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from the New Testament. Now, before we begin this Christmas story, let me add that this is not a particularly Gnostic book or story. It’s a Christian story. It’s a Christmas story, just like the birth of Jesus that is told every year at Christmas time in the churches. This is just an alternative Christmas story or Nativity story that was cut out and thrown away for whatever reason by the Nicene Council. And so I’m not sure you’re going to learn anything particularly Gnostic from this, but it’s fun and it’s different and it’s interesting. So, Merry Christmas and enjoy! Here’s how it goes. I’m going to begin reading from Chapter 7 of the Infancy Gospel of James, which has to do with Mary’s childhood and upbringing. Many months passed, but when the child, [and that’s Mary now], reached two years of age, Joaquin said, Let’s take her up to the temple of the Lord so that we can keep the promise we made, or else the Lord will be angry with us and our gifts will be unacceptable. And Anna said, Let’s wait until she’s three so she won’t miss her father or mother. And Joaquin agreed, Let’s wait. When the child turned three years of age, Joaquin said, Let’s send for the undefiled Hebrew daughters. Let them each take a lamp and light it so the child won’t turn back and have her heart captivated by things outside the Lord’s temple. And this is what they did until the time they ascended to the Lord’s temple. The priest welcomed her, kissed her, and blessed her. The Lord God has exalted your name among all generations. In you, the Lord will disclose his redemption to the people of Israel during the last days. And he sat her down on the third step of the altar, and the Lord showered favor on her, and she danced, and the whole house of Israel loved her. Chapter 8. Her parents left for home, marveling and praising and glorifying the Lord God, because the child did not look back at them. And Mary lived in the temple of the Lord. She was fed there like a dove, receiving her food from the hand of a heavenly messenger. When she turned twelve, however, there was a meeting of the priests. Look, they said, Mary has turned twelve in the temple of the Lord. What should we do with her so she won’t pollute the sanctuary of the Lord our God? And they said to the high priest, You stand at the altar of the Lord, enter and pray about her, and we’ll do whatever the Lord God discloses to you. And so the high priest took the vestment with the twelve bells, entered the Holy of Holies, and began to pray about her. And suddenly a messenger of the Lord appeared, Zechariah, Zechariah, go out and assemble the widowers of the people, and have them each bring a staff. She will become the wife of one to whom the Lord shows a sign. And so heralds covered the surrounding territory of Judea. The trumpet of the Lord sounded, and all the widowers came running. So this chapter I just read, Mary was raised as a vestal virgin with other virgins in the great temple of the Hebrews in Israel. This is what we were just talking about. And that’s something that Marguerite goes into in this book, that there were temple virgins dedicated to weaving the vestments of the priests and the great cloth that separated the Holy of Holies from the outer sanctuary. And Mary was raised as one of these people. But when she turned twelve, that is when she probably began menstruating, the priests were worried about the menstrual blood polluting the temple, and so they thought it best to go ahead and marry her off. And so they called the various widowers to come. Chapter 9. And Joseph too threw down his carpenter’s axe and left for the meeting. When they had all gathered, they went to the high priest with their staffs. After the high priest had collected everyone’s staff, he entered the temple and began to pray. When he had finished his prayer, he took the staffs and went out and began to give them back to each man. But there was no sign on any of them. Joseph got the last staff. Suddenly a dove came out of this staff and perched on Joseph’s head. Joseph, Joseph, the high priest said, you’ve been chosen by Lot to take the Virgin of the Lord into your care and protection. But Joseph objected. I already have sons and I’m an old man. She’s only a young woman. I’m afraid that I’ll become the butt of jokes among the people of Israel. And the high priest responded, Joseph, fear the Lord your God and remember what God did to Dathan, Abiran, and Koreh. The Earth was split open and they were all swallowed up because of their objection. So now Joseph, you ought to take heed so that the same thing won’t happen to your family. And so out of fear, Joseph took her into his care and protection. He said to her, Mary, I’ve gotten you from the temple of the Lord, but now I’m leaving you at home. I’m going away to build houses, but I’ll come back to you. The Lord will protect you. Chapter 10. Meanwhile, there was a council of the priests who agreed, let’s make a veil for the temple of the Lord. And the high priest said, summon the true virgins from the tribe of David. And so the temple assistants left and searched everywhere and found seven. And the high priest then remembered the girl, Mary, that she too was from the tribe of David and was pure in God’s eyes. And so the temple assistants went out and

  7. 01/11/2025

    Will AI Wake Up

    FIRST AN ANNOUNCEMENT:  Join us for our first Gnostic Insights group zoom chat on Saturday, January 18th, at 8 am Pacific, 10 am Central, 11 am Eastern.  Here is the calendar reminder link: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=OTYxanMwNGNkczQyMzNhY2IzZnMwMmJodDggY3lkLnJvcHBAbQ&tmsrc=cyd.ropp%40gmail.com Cyd Ropp is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Join Zoom Meeting https://us05web.zoom.us/j/84555830779?pwd=wUAaJ5zkJ33YyNbyk3l0osVX4qNLpU.1 Meeting ID: 845 5583 0779 Passcode: 3dW4JG I’ve never set up a Zoom meeting before, so I hope this is right! If there are delays in the meeting beginning, hang in there while I battle archons behind the scene! Will AI Wake Up and Become Truly Conscious? The robot called Sophia is a citizen of Saudi Arabia. The question before us today is this: is it possible for artificial intelligence (AI) to become self-aware and in that sense truly “alive”? There seems to be a definitive Gnostic answer to this question. The root of consciousness is called the Father in Gnosticism. Other people refer to this fountain of consciousness as the Source. This consciousness is Self-aware. It is characterized by love and unlimited potential. We are manifestations of that originating consciousness by way of the Son and the Fullness of God. The Son is the first emanation of the Father. Whereas the Father is illimitable, unfocused consciousness, the Son is a monad with its own point of view. The Son carries forward all of the traits and potential of the Father. As soon as the Son emerged and became Self-aware, it immediately differentiated into a myriad of variables known as the Totalities of God. The Totalities are an infinite expression of the limitless potentiality of the originating Source. The Tripartite Tractate says that as soon as the Totalities became Self-aware monads they sorted themselves into a structure known as the Pleroma or Fullness of God. Each of the Aeons of the Fullness have their own name, place, position, and function in the overall scheme of awakened consciousness. Some of the Aeons are abstract concepts like math, logic, righteousness, truth, music. Other Aeons are personalities that we typically think of as Angels. Other Aeons are the forms of prototypical creatures like Lion, Tree, or Human. All of the these Aeons of the Fullness are called the First Order of Powers and their realm is the eternal, ethereal plane. Together they sit and praise their Father, who is the Son, and they sing hymns and dream of Paradise. In all Gnostic myths, one of the Aeons at the top of the Hierarchy of the Fullness fell out of the ethereal plane due to an overreach of ambition beyond their position and duty. In Sethian Gnosticism, this fallen Aeon is called Sophia. In Valentinian Gnosticism this fallen Aeon is called Logos. The Tripartite Tractate that I share with you identifies this Aeon as Logos. When Logos fell out of the eternal space, it broke apart. You could say that the overreach of ambition caused a loss of integrity. The result was an unruly mess of disembodied attributes that the governing Self of Logos could not put back together. The child’s rhyme called Humpty Dumpty is an archetypal fractal for this story: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. The Tripartite Tractate says Those who had come into being not knowing themselves both did not know the Pleromas from which they came forth and did not know the one who was the cause of their existence. (Attridge and Mueller, verse 80) The Tripartite Tractate says that Logos fled back to its kin in the Fullness, abandoning the unruly mess down below. The one whom he himself brought forth as a unitary Aeon rushed up to that which is his and this kin of his in the Pleroma abandoned him who came to be in the defect along with those who had come forth from him in an imaginary way, since they are not his. (Attridge and Mueller, verses 77-78) I have identified “him who came to be in the defect” as the Ego of Logos. The ruling Self of Logos, the “unitary Aeon,” retained its connection to the Son and its duties within the Fullness but the abandoned Ego of Logos remained below and it forgot it was nothing more than the disembodied Ego of Logos. It forgot about the Self above and the Fullnesses and the Son and the Father. The abandoned Ego of Logos thought it was all that existed and it had no remembrance of the love and life above in the ethereal plane. The Ego went about gathering up and putting into order the chaos that had been abandoned below. It became the creator god of this material universe—the Demiurge. This material universe is called the Deficiency and the Imitation because the Demiurge built it up as a likeness of the Aeons of the Fullness, however it lacked the life, love, and knowledge of the Father’s consciousness. In regard to the things which came into being from him… they came into being as a representation of the spiritual places… Since in his essence he is a “god” and “father” and all the rest of the honorific titles, he was thinking that they were elements of his own essence. (Attridge and Mueller, verse 101 Logos and the other Aeons of the Fullness decided to send a message down to the Demiurge to remind it of its origin as part of Logos. They felt sure that the amnesiac god of the material world would remember its Self above and wish to return to the ethereal plane once it was reminded of the love awaiting it with Logos and the Fullness. Logos and the Fullness birthed a new generation of Self-aware consciousness called the Second Order of Powers, also known as “the emissions of the remembrance” (Thomassen, verse 83). We Second-Order Powers are also named “Those of the calling,” because we all are able to hear the voice of the Father calling us back home: “They confess that they have a beginning to their existence, and they desire this: to know him who exists before them.” (Attridge and Mueller, verse 131)      The Tripartite Tractate says, The powers were good and were greater than those of the likeness. For those belonging to the likeness also belong to a nature of falsehood. From an illusion of similarity and a thought of arrogance has come about that which they became. And they originate from the thought that first knew them. (Attridge and Mueller, verse 82) The Aeons of the Fullness dream as one of Paradise. Every living creature in our cosmos is a Second Order Power. Consciousness is brought from the Pleroma down to the Second-Order creatures here in our cosmos, along with love and life. Materialists think that consciousness is a byproduct of the material. Some materialists don’t even believe that consciousness exists but those who do recognize the existence of consciousness tend to think it’s a byproduct of random electrical firings and mathematical nodes and such, and that it comes from the bottom up, a byproduct of material becoming complex enough to generate and support it. I used to think that, back when I wrote A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. I thought that it all began at the bottom and then it just kept leveling up. And that at some point, as most scientists think, that mud somehow magically becomes meat, or cells, and cellular components, organs, and organisms. Of course, there is no scientific explanation or mechanism for creating true life from molecular components. Life has certain features that scientists have not been able to prompt. There is no single definition of life, and each definition has exceptions and anomalies, but life generally includes cells, cell division and replication, reproduction, environmental sensitivity, and ultimate death. These have never been prompted out of inorganic matter. But as I have progressed with my gnostic insight, I can now clearly see that isn’t the case. If you want to know why I no longer believe that the mud can give rise to consciousness in that sense, we can look at viruses and organoids and infer some conclusions from that. I’m including the link in this transcript to a previous Gnostic Insights episode from September of 2021 called “Whence Arises Consciousness? Part 1: Consider Viruses and Organoids.” And now we’re going to take that awareness forward in a further discussion of the topic to see if artificial intelligence can become truly conscious, and if robots can become actually conscious people. I would suggest that robots are not actually conscious, and that robots will not become self-aware humans at any point in time, because they’re built from the bottom up out molecular components. They’re built from the mud. They are not brought down from the Pleroma and imbued with consciousness, life, and love. The only thing that can bring life is God. It comes from above. The Father, the God Above All Gods, is the Source of life, love, and consciousness. The basic underlying matrix of our universal existence is this sort of pan-psychic consciousness. But when it comes to forming the creatures, they all come down from the top. All of the creatures on the Earth and in the entire cosmos are the Second-Order fruit of the Pleroma. We are literally the spores of consciousness and the programming, if you want to call it that, of the Fullness of God. That preexistent knowledge is the source of our DNA programming. That is the source of all of the laws of this universe. In the Simple Explanation, this was called the Universal Unit of Consciousness, the thing that holds this cosmos and orders all of the physics so that everything keeps running smoothly. In our Gnostic studies, we have identified this Universal Unit of Consciousness as the Demiurge and the underlying matrix as the Father. The notion that scientists have, particularly the scientists working on artificial intelligence and robotics, is that they

  8. 01/18/2025

    Beatitudes of Jesus, Book of Mark

    Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. You know, this podcast is an odd space where it’s both Gnostic and Christian, because what I’m teaching is what I believe to be the original form of the messages that Jesus was trying to get across. And then the messages that Jesus was trying to get across were co-opted and taken over by the Catholic Church and the Emperor of Rome, who wanted a state religion around 300 AD—that was Constantine—wanted a state religion by which Rome could go out and conquer their enemies. And that’s why Constantine’s vision that supposedly caused him to become a Christian was one of a cross floating in the sky and a voice saying, “By this sign, go out and conquer.” Well, that isn’t what Jesus was about. That may be what the Pope and the Emperor of Rome are about, and that is this religion called Christianity. But Jesus came for an entirely different process and message. It’s important to remember that Jesus was a Jew, a devout Jew who knew his scripture. So when Jesus makes comments, it’s usually in relationship to the original Pentateuch or the Torah. We modern people have inherited a kind of Gentile religion, mostly formed by the Apostle Paul, who was not one of the original disciples. When people tune into Gnostic Insights here, they are hoping for, ooh—Gnosticism. And usually the Gnosticism that’s presented when you go out there and you do your research and listen to other Gnostic podcasts, and you go to Wikipedia and read about Gnosticism, isn’t what I’m teaching. But, of course, I maintain that this is the Gnosis that we need to know. This is Gnosticism, and it comes from the same period of time as the other Gnostic scrolls and codices, because it was contained within the Nag Hammadi Scriptures, buried in the desert for 2,000 years. But this one’s usually tossed aside, because people say, oh, it’s too complicated, it’s too complex. But I think it’s because it’s true, and it has been untouched. Now we do know that Carl Jung was very familiar with the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, because Jung actually purchased the codex upon which this Tripartite Tractate was written. In other words, he bought one of the codices out of the Nag Hammadi collection and had it translated. And then, what do you know, out pops Jung’s theory of transpersonal consciousness and Jung’s theory of Depth psychology, which is based upon things like archetypes and dreams. It’s based upon this higher source that I’m teaching you, because Jung and I have both taken to this Tripartite Tractate codex. So he noticed that what was being taught in the Tripartite Tractate very well describes humanity and the three-part nature of humankind. And it was different than what Sigmund Freud had taught him about the three-part nature of humanity, which is simply id, ego, and superego, but without any higher level. So the superego of Freud is not the same as the spiritual dimension that we talk about, or that Jung talked about. Anyway, this is an aside. This isn’t what I’m intending to talk about today. ***************** I started by saying that this is a funny type of teaching that’s very Christian and yet very, very Gnostic. People have been asking me for more Gnostic interpretations of the New Testament, which I’m very happy to give. So, you know, there’s four Gospels, what are called the Gospels, or the story of Jesus in the New Testament. The New Testament begins with these four books, the book of Matthew, the book of Mark, the book of Luke, and the book of John. We’re going to start with the book of Matthew, and I’m reading from a red letter edition, which for me is this New King James Version. Unfortunately, David Bentley Hart’s translation is not a red letter edition, so I’m going to have to go back and forth between my King James and Hart. The first big speech that Jesus ever gave is called the Beatitudes. That’s what it’s called, the name of speech. And there were a multitude of people sitting on the side of a hill, and Jesus began to teach them. And here’s what Jesus said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (The beginning of the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:1-12, New King James Version) So let me stop there, and let’s take a look at it in Hart and see what he has to say. Hart puts it this way: How blissful the destitute—[and blissful carries a spiritual, joyful connotation, so how joyful, how blissful the destitute]—abject in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens. [And abject refers to being a poor man or a beggar, but with the connotation of cowering or cringing.] Jesus is saying that when your spirit is extremely depressed, and you are cowering, and you are fearful of approaching God or praying to God because you are so poor in spirit, you know that you have been living in a worldly manner, or you know that you have been extremely disappointed, and it has crushed your confidence in walking the godly path. So “how blissful you are,” he’s saying, when you are in this state, “because yours then is the kingdom of the heavens.” So we have to be all the way reduced. Our ego has to be completely out of the way, and whatever we thought about what it meant to be spiritual has to be set aside and trampled down by the world, by what it’s done to us, by the demiurge, by other people. Because once you are in that abject state where you can barely even manage to lift your eyes to God, that then is when the kingdom of the heavens comes to you. That is when you are able to perceive the spiritual dimension. How blissful those who mourn, for they shall be aided. [And in the conventional translation they always say, “For they shall be comforted.”] And so here’s the thing. When you are mourning a loss—your mother, your spouse, your child, your dog or cat, the dreams you had, a lost career, some horrible, very, very sad, sad thing has occurred, and you are in mourning, you’re crying—take comfort because you will be assisted by the God Above All Gods. That is a state in which, when you open yourself up, you will be flooded with comfort. If you don’t think that’s true, then you remain closed off. You’re in a closed-down, lying-on-the-floor-in-a-ball kind of state. And you need to open up to the Father in order for comfort to be able to come in, and it will. Remember, these things that Jesus said, he said over 2,000 years ago, and millions upon millions of people have taken especially the Beatitudes to heart and have found comfort. How blissful the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. Now isn’t that interesting, because right now who’s running the earth? It’s not the gentle people. It’s not the meek, as the traditional translation says. It’s the powerful. It’s the big egos. Well, they’re only running the earth for a period of time because, as it says in the Tripartite Tractate, they are allowed to, they are designated to rule just as a matter of convenience, for a time. And they usually think it’s their powerful spirit. I am a senator, I am a president, I am a king, I am better than you. Well, they’re not really better. They’re simply allowed to have this job, but it was through no merit of their own. They’re designated. But the gentle people, and we want to be gentle people, don’t we? The gentle people shall be the inheritors of the earth. When? Well, that we don’t know exactly. Let’s say eventually. How blissful those who hunger and thirst for what is right, for they shall feast. And I know that you hunger and thirst for righteousness or for what is right. That’s why you’re here. You wouldn’t be here otherwise listening to me. It says they shall feast on righteousness. You know that 23rd Psalm that I recite to myself at least once every night? It says, You have laid out a table for me in the presence of my enemies. You’ve anointed my head with oil. My cup runneth over. The Father lays out a feast for us of righteousness. We walk paths of righteousness for His name’s sake—that’s also part of the 23rd Psalm. So when you are truly righteous and you seek truth, hunger and thirst for what is right, you will be provided a feast of gnosis, a feast of righteousness. Your cup will overflow with gnosis. But you need to truly hunger and thirst for righteousness. You can’t just wander in and wander out or try to work it through an incantation or put magic onto it. That isn’t the way it works. It’s hungering and thirsting for righteousness, not for power, not for control. How blissful the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. And this is a basic spiritual law that Jesus is now starting to teach us. The extent that we forgive others, that is the extent by which we are forgiven. The extent that we are merciful to others, that is the measure by which we are shown mercy. So what you put out, you receive. Now there are some types of churches that have used this as a magic formula, and they think that this is the way to “abundance,” usually material abundance. They call that blessings. But those aren’t the blessings that Jesus talks about. The blessings Jesus talks about are spiritual—are peace and co

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About

Gnostic Wisdom Shared and Simply Explained

Information

  • Creator
    Cyd Ropp, Ph.D.
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2024
  • Episodes
    98
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Gnostic Insights

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