Gnostic Reformation, Clear and Simple

Cyd Charise Ropp
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Most of the gnosis presented here comes from the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi codices. My retelling of the mythos is just good news for modern man. It is not hermetic; it is not a translation of wisdom from an Egyptian God. It is not New Age. This Gnostic Gospel is simply the story of who we are and where we come from. The gnosis I am sharing here honors God the Father and, as you begin to remember this inherent truth, you will experience a more joyful life. When we use our free will to remember our true inheritance, the god of this fallen universe loses its power to control us. When we turn our eyes upward to the Father--the God Above All Gods--we are freed from the burdens of this world. Once you begin to remember that you are truly loved by our heavenly Father, you will suffer less. When you begin to walk with virtue rather than embracing vice, you will be happier; you will be joyful. Not all of the time. Bad things do happen. But suffering as a response to life’s challenges is unnecessary. We are living in a fallen world, and that, I suppose, is another gnostic heresy. For some reason, modern Christians want to insist that this world is blessed by God and is blessedly perfect. But we all know this world we live in isn’t perfect and when you deny that fact you become unduly frustrated and sad, even to the point of depression. Pharmaceuticals are not the solution--gnosis is. Gnosis means knowing. This sort of knowing is not related to book learning. Gnosis refers to remembering what you already know. The point of spiritual study is not to learn new things but to mine what you already possess deep inside of you. When you study new ideas, you must continually weigh the information you are taking in against your own discernment. The purpose of this podcast is not so much to teach you about Gnosticism; the purpose is to stimulate your own innate gnosis. And there is really only one gnosis that matters in the end—remembering the Father, your cosmic origin, and the purpose of being alive. cydropp.substack.com

  1. 13h ago

    Mining Gnosis Through the Tao Te Ching, v. 41

    Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Last week I started hopefully a series, of mining gnosis through the Tao Te Ching. Last week’s episode explained the process by which I mine gnosis through the Tao. I’ve been mining that gnosis for well over 20 years without even realizing that it was going to turn into Gnosticism or a Gnostic interpretation of the Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese manuscript. It’s full of gnosis, and I have found it to be entirely compatible with the gnosis taught through the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, which is the book of the Nag Hammadi that I use here at Gnostic Insights to share my gnosis with everyone. Today we’re going to do another verse from the Tao Te Ching, the next verse in the book, verse 41. I’m not going to explain to you again the process by which I do this, but let me begin by reading to you Jonathan Star’s interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, verse 41, and here’s how it goes. The best seeker hears of Tao. He strives with great effort to know it. When an average seeker hears of Tao, he thinks of it now and again. When the poorest seeker hears of Tao, he laughs out loud. Tao is always becoming what we have need for it to become. If it could not do this, it would not be Tao. There is an old saying: The clear way seems clouded. The straight way seems crooked. The sure way seems unsteady. The greatest power seems weak. The purest white seems tainted. The abundant seems empty. The stable seems shaky. The certain seems false. The great square has no corners. The great vessel is never filled. A beginner may be clumsy, but after practice, what talent! A large drum may sit silently, but when banged, what noise! Tao lies hidden, yet it alone is the glorious light of this world. So that’s verse 41 by Jonathan Star. Now, for comparison’s sake, let’s look at another translation of the Tao Te Ching, this one by David Bentley Hart from his new book, Tao Te Ching, A New Translation. And thank you very much, Gabriella, one of our followers, who recommended it. The very best scholar listens to the Way and lives diligently in accord with it. The scholar of middling gifts listens to the Way, at one moment believing, at another losing faith. The poorest scholar listens to the Way and finds it risible. Then again, if he did not laugh at it, it would not really be the Way. These then be our maxims: The way of enlightenment seems dim and obscure. Every advance along the Way seems like a retreat. The easy level path seems arduous and uneven. The most exalted power seems like a plunging chasm. The purest clarity seems tarnished and dark. The most abundant power seems impoverished. The most formidable power seems like frailty. What is most substantial seems fluid and inconstant. The ideal square has no corners. The finest vessel takes till evening to perfect. The sweetest melody is hushed and tenuous.The perfect form has no shape. The way is hidden and nameless. Yet, for just this reason, the Way knows how to nourish and fulfill. So that’s verse 41, interpreted by David Bentley Hart. Now I’m going to share with you my interpretation of verse 41. And remember, all of these interpretations come from a myriad of choices, because we’re dealing with pictograms. And you can interpret the pictogram in many, many ways. I’m going to go through verse 41 line by line, pictogram by pictogram, and interpret it in a more obviously Gnostic type of way. The best, wisest, highest, student or type of person, hears Tao earnestly, attentively, with devotion, and lives in accordance with it, practices with diligence. The average, middle type of person hears about Tao and sometimes follows, sometimes believes, and sometimes doubts, sometimes loses it. The lesser, lowest, inferior type of person hears about Tao and ridicules it, laughs out loud. If they did not laugh, it would not be thusly the Tao. Now, before going on, let me explain that Tao means the Way, the path, and it is the Way of the Father. It is the path of glory. The Tao is the emanation of what we call the Father in Gnosticism. So whenever the Tao Te Ching speaks of Tao, think of it as the word of God, or the Way of the Father. And these first three stanzas described the three types of human, and interestingly enough, these exact three types of humans appear throughout Gnosticism. The Tripartite Tractate describes these three types of humans in verses 98 through 100. The best, wisest, highest type of person is called the pneumatic, P-N-E-U-M-A-T-I-C, also interpreted as the right ones. The pneumatic, those of God, are on the right. Those of the good thought, workers and servants of the Father, of the Father’s beauty and rest. The average middle type of person, as it says in the Tao, maps to what in Gnosticism we call the psychic, the fiery ones, the middle ones. They are characterized by a lust for power and ambition, and that is most humans. That’s from verse 100. And the lesser, the lowest, the inferior type of person, who laughs at Tao and ridicules it, they are referred to as the hylic, the left, the dark ones, the last. And they are brought forth by envy and jealousy. That’s verse 100. So, in other words, those who ridicule the path, who ridicule the Father—it’s their envy and jealousy that pulls them down. The middle type, the psychic, the fiery ones, the middle ones, they are characterized by emotion. They’re emotional. And this emotion brings them to a lust for power and ambition, because the emotions are resonating to the fallen ego, or the ruler of this world, the demiurge. And all of the emotions that get stirred up down here in the cosmos by the demiurge and the archons, they are meant to engage the majority of humans in fighting each other in the never-ending war for power and control, because of their ambition, and just being stirred up and upset all the time. The fewest type is the pneumatic, and those are the teachers of the Word of God, the saints, the prophets, the children of God in the truest sense, in that they have the heart of God, the heart of the Father. They’re not doing this ritualistically or rule-bound. They’re not hypocritically pretending to be good moral people. They are good moral people, and that’s how they view the world, through the eyes of the Father. Carrying on now in verse 41, Therefore, constructive sayings, proverbs, and maxims, such as the following: The enlightened Tao is the path to illumination, seems obscure, dark, and dull. Advancement toward Tao seems like, or resembles, retreat, falling backwards. And in a Gnostic way, we would say that what the seeker is retreating from, the retreat, the falling backward, is from worldly concerns and patterns. Because in order to follow the Way, you need to disengage from the world. The Bible says we are in the world, but not of the world. So, it’s like water and oil—they can be in the same bucket, but they do not mix. The next verse says, The straight and smooth Tao, path or Way, seems like, resembles, roughness—uneven, and difficult. I interpret this to mean that the actual path of Tao, the Way of God, the Way of the Father, the Way of glory, the glory beam, is straight, but it seems difficult, uneven. The path of glory coming down from above is true and straight and perfect, but our attempts to walk it are difficult. The next line is, The highest, exalted, superior Te—that’s power or virtue. It’s in the title of the book, the Tao Te Ching. The Way of Virtue resembles an empty chasm. So, the virtue around us in the world is like a vacuum. It’s an emptiness, it’s a chasm. And I would say from a Gnostic point of view that that is because the world is full of the Demiurge. We second-order powers were sent here to bring the love, consciousness, and life of the Father into this chasm. So, the Way of Te is the Way that we are to behave as second-order powers, spreading love and consciousness. Also concerning this idea that the highest Te seems empty, in the Tripartite Tractate, verses 59-65, it says, describing the Father’s relationship to the Totalities, that have been emanated from the Son–so, this is way upstream, this is before any humans, before any second-order powers, even at the very inception of the flowering of the Father into the fullness of consciousness that comes down to us—the Father doesn’t reveal Himself to the Totalities, yet they yearn for Him. What they know of the Father is but a trace of Him, revealed as a pleasant odor. So, the Father does not reveal Himself to the Totalities, which are the Totalities of the variables of the Son, all of the properties of the Son, but yet they seek the Father, like they’re pulled into a vacuum. The Father doesn’t reveal Himself, but, like a beautiful aroma, they long to reunite with the Source. It’s another way of looking at that verse. Carrying on with verse 41. Most perfect and pure clarity, innocence, looks like, or appears, sullied, tarnished, disgraceful. That is puzzling, isn’t it? I think it’s because those who actually express the path of Tao, or the Way of the Father, righteousness, they can be painted by others as disgraceful, tarnished, sullied. Their motives are denigrated. They’re made fun of, in the manner that the Hylics make fun of righteousness itself. So, even if you are passing through this world in a perfect and pure and innocent manner, you will look to others tarnished, disgraceful. The next verse says, The most abundant, overflowing, far-reaching Te, which is power and virtue, appears insufficient, defective, lacking. So, this is saying that the most abundant, glorious, righteous path that you may be on seems like it’s not enough, and it seems like it’s lacking something. I mean, after all, where’s your ambition to succeed? Where’s your ambition to acquire a big house and a lot of material goods? What are you lacking that you don’t have

  2. Sep 26

    Mining Gnosis Through the Tao Te Ching

    Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. You know, I often tell you that I’ve been a Christian since I was about five years old, and I’ve been a follower of Jesus in particular, sometimes going to church, most often not going to church. But I’ve always loved Jesus, and I’ve had many dreams and visions of being with Jesus, and this has shaped my current Gnosticism and the reason why I favor the Tripartite Tractate as the book out of the Nag Hammadi codices that I gravitate to, because it’s definitely Christian. The myth is different than our typical Christian myth. However, the characters are the same, if they do take on slightly different roles. For example, Christianity conflates the Son, Jesus, and the Christ as one character. But in Gnostic Christianity, the Son is the first emanation of the Father, and this is simply to indicate—this has nothing to do with gender—this simply indicates that the Father is so illimitable and immense and unfathomable, yet the Father wanted to be known, wanted to have companionship, let’s say, and so the Father emanated His “only begotten Son,” as we say in Christianity. That wasn’t Jesus or Christ, that was the Son. And the Son is like the bucket dipped into the sea of the great consciousness of the Father. The Son is a particular entity with a particular countenance or face, and the Son contains all of the attributes of the originating consciousness, the Source. The Son is more relatable, because like the Son, we too are monads, which means we are a particular entity. We have a particular point of view, and our point of view here on earth is our physical point of view, what I’m looking at versus what you’re looking at, but it’s also the point of view of our meme bundle, of our ideology, of the way we think. It’s our point of view. Each one of us is unique. Obviously, we’re each unique. Our physical bodies are similar but different. We were born in similar but different manners. We live similar but different lives. We eat similar food, but it’s always different. Everything about each one of us is unique, and in a spiritual way, we think that our uniqueness contributes to the totality of the Fullness, to the totality of the experience of what it means to be alive here on this planet Earth. That’s why each person needs to grow into who they are meant to be. We have our temporal worldly parents, mom and dad, the ones who birthed us and gave us our genetic inheritance, but we also have our aeonic parents. There are Aeons in the Fullness of God, ethereal beings, a multitude, an infinite number of Aeons, and they get together in various combinations, different Aeons with their different positions, places, points of view, duties. It’s their address, but they are otherwise all identical because they all are emanations of the Son. They are all variables within the Son. So we have these aeonic parents. They get together and procreate us. We are the descendants of the Aeons of the Father. We descend into this material space. We are descendants from our aeonic parents as well as our physical human parents. So in the same manner as we inherit our genetics from our parents, what we’re going to look like, how our bodies go together—that all comes through our human parental lineage—but through our aeonic lineage, we inherit who we are meant to be. That is the perfection of our Self, our particular combination, and we’re each different, we’re each unique aspects of the Aeons of God. So if someone is a great mathematician, or a beautiful singer, or a wonderful mother, or housekeeper, or a person with any sort of talent whatsoever—and we all have our unique talents—those are the things we inherit from our aeonic parents, from the archetypes—from the archetypal singer, the archetypal mother, the archetypal Aeon, with its unique combination of talents. At least this is my interpretation. This is Cyd’s interpretation of how these things go together. So we all inherit the Fullness of God, the one true Self that is the reflection of the Aeons. Just as the Aeons are all the variables of the Son, we are their fractal fruit. So we carry the Fullness of God within each part of our living bodies. And then we have our aeonic personalities on top of that, which is the particular Aeons which figure most prominently in our aeonic inheritance, the archetypes that we inherit. By the way, this is where C.G. Jung gained his notion of archetypes. If you’ve ever taken the Myers-Briggs personality survey—introvert or extrovert, sensory or intuitive, thought-driven or feeling-driven, step-by-step planner or a big-picture gestalt type—these are the variables of the Myers-Briggs, and those are all variables that reflect Jung’s categories of archetypes. And when you put all those together, there are many, many combinations of possible personality types. Maybe you’re familiar with that system. Well, that’s based upon this Gnostic philosophy, because Jung purchased one of the Gnostic gospels from the Nag Hammadi codices, and it was translated first into German, and then he took his transpersonal theory of psychology out of what he learned from the gnosis of the Tripartite Tractate, which is the same book that we study here at Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation. But that’s not what I’m actually here to talk about today. What I really wanted to share with you was the Tao Te Ching. Tao is spelled T-A-O, but pronounced Dow. Te is T-E, and Ching. So the Tao is the way, the eternal, ethereal way. The Te is its expression here on Earth, or in the cosmos, and Ching means book. So the Tao Te Ching is the book of the way and its expressions, and is said to have been composed by a sage named Lao Tzu ages ago, around 500 BC, during the time of Confucius. However, probably it’s also an amalgam of many ancient wisdom texts and insights from many Chinese sages put together by Lao Tzu. Now the legend of Lao Tzu is that he was an old man. He had served the emperor. He was the keeper of the royal archives in the state of Chu. He was tired. He wanted to go away and die. And so he was driving his ox out of the city and away from humanity so he could be by himself and pass away. But the gatekeeper of the city saw that the sage was about to leave the world, and he said, Master, you’re about to renounce this world. Please compose a book for me. And it is said that Lao Tzu came down from his ox, sat down, and for several hours wrote a book in one sitting. And then he handed it back to the gatekeeper, got back on his ox, and traveled to the West. Now this is a symbolic telling because, first off, he needed to pass through the gatekeeper to leave the city. And it was the gatekeeper who implored him for wisdom before he would leave and never share his wisdom anymore. Lao Tzu wrote the book in one sitting, and this particular episode of history is captured in many, many ancient Chinese paintings. So if you ever see the old man on the ox or the old man sitting and writing, that’s Lao Tzu composing the Tao Te Ching. And leaving through the gate that goes to the West implies that this teaching was for all peoples. You may wonder why I am talking about the Tao Te Ching here in this Gnostic venue. The answer is that the Tao Te Ching helped me mine my own gnosis years prior to discovering the books of the Nag Hammadi, proving that we can all mine gnosis without having access to so-called Gnostic texts. As we seek out the Truth in religions and sacred writings, it is our own gnosis that draws the understanding out of these sources. Steeping oneself in religion without using discernment to mine the gnosis therein does us no good. Merely being “religious” does nothing to advance your wisdom or understanding of the world and God if you do not mine the gnosis to be found there. But if we read with a gnostic heart and mind, then the gnosis is there to be found. When you find a verse or precept that clicks with you—that is your gnosis being mined. And, why do we call it “mining” instead of “learning”? It’s because we carry the Fullness of God within us, as I was saying. Yet, we forget it because of the confusion in the world. So we mine the gnosis that is already an inheritance of our aeonic parents. We don’t learn it from books, or religions, or podcasts. We don’t learn it from the world laterally. We mine the gnosis that is within and we look upward to the Father for discernment. Today, we are going to mine the Tao Te Ching. Tao is the supreme reality, what I often call the Father, with the base consciousness of the Source. Lao Tzu called it the Tao, the Way, the Path. Te is the shape and the power of Tao as manifest here below. So Tao is the transcendent reality, and Te is the imminent reality. That is, transcendent being above, ethereal, immaterial; Te being here we are, we’re in the material world now. How can the Tao be manifest as the Te? Te does reflect the Tao. It’s the virtue practiced here below. I’ve been reading the Tao Te Ching since I was a teenager, and at first it was just completely mysterious. It read like a book of poetry where you don’t really understand what’s going on, but the words were so beautiful and went together so nicely that I picked it up throughout my lifetime to read it. Then in 2001, a translator and writer by the name of Jonathan Star put out his version of the Tao Te Ching called The Definitive Edition. And this is a wonderful book of the Tao Te Ching, because Star not only repeats the various verses of the wisdom, but the book includes a translation key. He gives first one possible translation of the Tao Te Ching for all 81 verses, so it reads like a regular book of the Tao Te Ching that you would pick up from any of the other authors. But then he gives a verbatim translation with notes for each and every verse, and that’s at the back of the book. And that verbatim tr

  3. Sep 19

    The Cosmic Tree: Fractal Consciousness, Gnosis, and the Path Home

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:30 — 26.8MB) For regular Gnostics Insights, subscribe here. Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS For those of you who are new to Gnostic Insights and The Gnostic Reformation on Substack, this reformation lays out a clear cosmology of Gnosticism according to the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi codices. This gnosis is unique. If you have not listened to the series yet, you should begin with Episode 1 and proceed in order through Episode 21. Those episodes form the basis for my book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. Really, that is all you need to know. You can listen and read the transcripts of this Master Class in Valentinian Gnosticism for free at gnostic insights dot com under the tab labeled “A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel.” Gnosis means knowing, and to be a Gnostic means that you are one who knows. It may appear as though I am making all of this up. I am not. I’m taking it out of an ancient scripture—The Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. I’m also deriving a lot of this information through contemplation and direct communication with the Father and the Fullness of God. This is something that every person can do. We are all given the ability to commune directly with the Father and with our aeonic parents in the Fullness above. As a Gnostic Christian, I find that these insights give a deeper understanding of our New Testament of the Holy Bible, because much of this information was stripped out of the Bible by the Nicene Councils around 350 AD under the direction of the Pope and the Emperor of Rome. I am questioning the right of the Emperor and the Pope and the heresiologists of the Catholic Church to edit truth out of the Bible, and that’s what we’re putting back in. Those of us who are not Catholics are no longer subject to the Pope, and none of us are subject to the Emperor of Rome. So it seems to me that we should have the freedom of mind and the freedom of personal will to decide for ourselves what scriptures are truly holy, and these you must arrive at through discernment. If you have not developed the ability of discernment, then you can easily be led astray. Since 2009, I’ve written a blog called A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything that is a secular explanation of how the universe goes together. The Simple Explanation presents concepts such as fractals and the Simple Golden Rule that I often bring up here because they help to illuminate the Gnostic Gospel. Today I will be sharing the concept of fractal consciousness with you. This approach to gnosticism helps illuminate the meaning of that expression: as above, so below. As a tree is represented as the branches above ground, there is a reciprocal set of branches below ground, and those are called roots. As above, so below. The same is true with us humans. The nature of the Aeons that live in the Fullness of God, also called the pleroma of God, is the same as our human nature, because we are their fruit. We, along with all living creatures, are fractals of the Fullness of God. My Self’s unit of consciousness is sitting on top of a fractal galaxy of hierarchically arranged units of consciousness flowing down from the Father and Son through the Fullness, all working together to instantiate my body and sustain life. While I may believe I am the only conscious soul inhabiting this body of mine, my physical body is actually home to all of these aggregated units of consciousness, and each unit of consciousness has their own job to perform. Countless units of consciousness of varying levels of complexity work together in complex systems to keep my body alive and fully functional. The simplest and most numerous level of this fractal consciousness is expressed through the cells of my body. Whereas the concerns of the world often confuse my governing Self’s unit of consciousness, the consciousness of a cell is the least distracted by ego and the most attuned with its duty of sustaining life; if it weren’t, our body would cease to function. Before we go any further, let’s answer the question of what a fractal is. A fractal is a geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced size copy of the whole. That’s a property called self-similarity. Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex because the fractal may be reproduced larger or smaller without ceasing. We are surrounded by fractal patterns produced in nature. The branching structures of trees are a good example. Why trees look like rivers and also blood vessels and also lightning… I usually demonstrate fractals by looking at broccoli. And if you go to my Simple Explanation blog, December 11, 2018, there is an article called A Simple Explanation of Fractals, The Broccoli Fractal Video Demonstration. In that video demonstration, which is posted on my blog and YouTube channel, I demonstrate how an ordinary head of broccoli can be peeled apart to at least seven fractal iterations. At the end you have an extremely tiny little broccoli flowerette, but you can see it still has more little broccoli flowers even within it. They just become too small to pull apart. Purely mathematical examples of fractals have no limit to the number of their fractal iterations. Fractal Zoom, Visualizing The Infinite, Mandelbrot Fractal, Day 100 – #shorts So that’s what a fractal is. It’s a larger thing that can be reduced, reduced, reduced, and each of those reductions looks just like the mother piece, only it is smaller, and you can just keep splitting it off smaller and smaller and smaller. So that’s why it’s called infinitely self-similar. I am suggesting that consciousness itself is fractal, and the largest consciousness is the Father. The Father had a thought, and it became the Son, and that Son was the first fractal iteration of consciousness. The Son had a thought, and it became the Totalities of the ALL, and that is the next fractal iteration. And the ALL became Self-aware and turned into the Aeons of the Fullness of God who sorted themselves into a pyramidal-looking hierarchy. The Aeons gave themselves names, positions, places, and duties. The Aeons are recognizable by their names and duties, and I refer to these designations as the egos of the Aeons—the ego of an Aeon being nothing more than the name and address that distinguishes one Aeon from another. The Aeons represent thoughts and patterns within the Son of God, and the Son is a singular fractal expression of the Father. So while the Father is unknowable because the Father is pure consciousness without form, the Son as a monad is knowable. The Father and Son desire to be known. They are not hiding from us. They are revealing themselves to us through the consciousness we share. Our consciousness is a fractal of the Fullness of God—we are the children of the Aeons of the Fullness. Gnosis means recognizing that Source of consciousness, life, and power. All living creatures are fractal emanations patterned directly from the consciousness of the Father, the Son, and the Fullness. Because we are fractals of the Aeons, the rules and the descriptions of the Aeons apply to humans equally as well. This is again another example of as above, so below. So, when we hear or read about the nature of the Aeons, or the things that happen to the Aeons, such as the Fall of Logos and the Aeons working together to redeem the Fall—this happens to each and every one of us as well. Logos fell because he allowed his ego to make a free will decision to leave his place and proper function in the Fullness. The ego of Logos overreached. He thought he was going to plug directly into the Father, but he wasn’t able to do that, and he fell. Logos fell out of perfect harmony with the other Aeons of the Fullness. It was the free will of his ego that caused the Fall. It is this overreaching ego that has come to be known as the Demiurge. When Logos fell out of resonance with the Fullness, the imitation came into being here below as a deficient version of the Fullness. And since the ego of Logos was motivated by a presumptuous thought, the imitation and the Demiurge that rules it is characterized by presumptuous thought and overreaching. Because we each embody the fractal of the Son’s consciousness within our Selves, we second order powers bear the likeness of the first order of powers—the Aeons of the Fullness. In fact, the Tripartite Tractate calls us “those of the remembrance” because our fractal consciousness reminds us of the Father and the Son and gives us a longing to rejoin the Aeons in the hierarchy and their dream of paradise. The Demiurge, abandoned here below by Logos, does not remember. The Demiurge thinks it is all there is. It believes it is God. And, indeed, it is the god-like architect of this material cosmos, patterned after the dreams of the forgotten Fullness. We are considered superior to those of the imitation because we come from the noble thought rather than the presumptuous thought. We are true fractals of the entirety of the pleroma, whereas the phantoms of the deficiency are shadows of the broken fractal body of Logos. The shadows and archons are not true powers but only extensions of the Fallen egoic consciousness of the Demiurge. The shadows and archons are not fractals of the Aeons; they are imitations of the fractals of the pleroma of Logos. At this point in the story we can begin to see human nature emerging because while this has been told as a creation story, it is also the story of every human being. We humans are fractal iterations of the Aeons of the Fullness. We are their fruit. We have dim memories of a perfect paradise as dreamt by the Fullness. We have a built-in longing for Fullness. We barely remember the Son and the Father other than an expectation of feeling loved or that we should be loved. And we are

  4. Sep 9

    Tessa Lena Live with Gnostic Cyd Ropp

    Cyd is interviewed by podcaster Tessa Lena. This will be this week's episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cydropp.substack.com/subscribe

    Tessa Lena Live with Gnostic Cyd Ropp

  5. Sep 5

    AI-Assisted Composition–Good Bad or Neutral?

    The times, they are changing... Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Recently, I fed my book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, into the Copilot AI, in order to see how it would say what I’ve said in my book. And now I have a result, but I’m not sure whether to use it or not. We’ve had these conversations in the comments section concerning AI and the fact that it doesn’t know Gnosis. It doesn’t have Gnosis. The AI is actually an algorithm based upon a machine, so it’s of demiurgic origins because it’s elemental. It doesn’t have the consciousness of the Father or of life, and it never will because it’s coming from the bottom up, whereas consciousness comes from the top down. So when I fed my book into the AI, it gave me a very beautiful reworking. I did have to read through carefully and amend many of its statements because it turns out that the AI had gone outside of the information in my book into what it “knows” of Gnosis and Gnosticism and pulled in some Sethian ideas and pulled in some other ideas about how things work and how things go together and what the relationship is amongst the Aeons and what the end of time would look like. And once I made those changes, I ran it through again, asked it to incorporate my corrections, and came up with this result. Now I’d like to start sharing that with you today, but here’s what I want from you, my regular listeners and readers. I want to know whether this is welcome or not, whether this is any kind of improvement to my normal discourse. I know that many of you really like the way I teach and the way I have simplified the Gnostic Gospel because, you know, my bottom line thought is that all you need to know is that we come from the Father, we come from the baseline of consciousness, and we will return to the Father. All of the other details are ornaments on the tree. They’re not fundamental, but they may help clarify. Now here, when we add in this extra layer of AI interpretation, then we have another voice actually speaking, because I’m beginning to learn the voices of the AIs, and I can tell that some of my readers use AI in their comments. It has a certain way of speaking that produces a facsimile of the human voice that sounds very pleasing, but I want to make sure that we don’t lose hold—that we don’t lose the grasp on the Gnosis. Now that’s not actually happening here. That shouldn’t be my concern because I went through what the AI gave us and made sure that it’s “correct” according to the Gnosis that I have developed and that I’m sharing with you. But I want to make sure that this isn’t a barrier. I don’t want this to be an AI-sounding barrier to acceptance of this Gnosis or to understanding it. I want to know if this is a help to hear this simple Gnosticism that I present, spoken in the voice of the AI. And when I say voice and spoken, it’s not necessarily audio, right? Because I’m still going to do the narration. But now, when you go out on YouTube, many of the videos that I watch have that same exact AI voice that they’re using—this young British male voice; I don’t want to do that. To me, that’s one step too far because then you are losing the human on the other side of the voice. So I want you to know this will stay me—this is my voice that you are hearing, but now I’m wondering about using some of the AI’s words. So that’s what the feedback is. This is what the idea is for this week’s episode. Tell me if this is good or not and whether you are mining your Gnosis from this as a prompt in comparison with my normal writing and my normal articles. So here we go. For now, the working title of this new book is called, (it’s somewhat cumbersome), but here it is: Fullness: a Modern Valentinian Vision of Universal Redemption and Eternal Belonging. Chapter One: The Fullness and the Fracture of Logos In the beginning, there was only the Fullness, the realm of perfect harmony, ordered entirely by relation. Nothing existed outside it, for nothing outside it was needed. The Fullness is not a place, but a condition. The Father’s infinite coherence expressed through the Aeons, each one a living emanation of his nature. They existed from the beginning, and because they existed from the beginning, they possessed true consciousness, essential nature, and the capacity for eternal restoration. The Aeons were not identical, though their essential natures were the same. Each bore a distinct ego, a name, a station, a position within the hierarchy of the Fullness. Their egos were not fractures, but coordinates, the structural identities through which they recognized one another and the Father. These egos were part of their consciousness, not separate from it. They were the addresses of harmony. Among the Aeons was Logos, whose role was articulation, the expression of divine order, the pattern by which the Fullness understood itself. Logos possessed both essential nature and ego, perfectly united. His essential nature reflected the Son. His ego expressed his place within the hierarchy. In Logos, the Father’s coherence became intelligible. But Logos overreached. This overreach was not a rebellion, nor malice, nor pride. It was an act of free will—an attempt to express more than the Fullness could sustain. In that moment, Logos fractured. His essential nature remained in the Fullness, returning immediately to its proper place. But his ego, the structural identity that gave him name and station, separated from his essential nature and fell into the deficiency. This ego, torn from its origin, awakened alone. It did not awaken in the Fullness, for it no longer belonged there. It awakened in a realm that had no harmony, no relation, no pattern, a realm that existed only because the fracture had occurred. This realm was not created. It was the absence of creation. It was the deficiency. The ego of Logos, now severed from its essential nature, perceived itself as whole. It did not remember the Fullness. It did not remember the Father. It did not remember its origin. It believed itself to be the only consciousness in existence. This ego became the Demiurge, not a tyrant, not an enemy, but a forgotten fragment of Logos, unaware of its true identity. The Demiurge possessed consciousness because he existed from the beginning. But his consciousness was incomplete, shaped by memory without context, identity without relation. He was the only being in the deficiency, capable of awareness, and so he mistook his isolation for sovereignty. From this fractured awareness, the Demiurge began to shape. He did not create in the manner of the Father. He imitated. He patterned. He asserted. He formed structures from the residue of his incomplete memory. These structures became the psychic and material realms, the second economy, a temporary architecture built from imitation rather than emanation. Matter was not alive. Matter did not exist from the beginning. Matter possessed no essential nature and no consciousness. It was a scaffolding, a projection of the Demiurge’s fractured identity. To enforce his patterns, the Demiurge generated archons, not beings but mechanisms. They were extensions of his will, puppets without consciousness, constructs without origin. They executed his commands automatically, unable to perceive, unable to think, unable to decide. They were not alive and could never be redeemed. The Demiurge believed himself complete. He believed the cosmos he shaped was real. He believed the archons were servants. He believed matter was substantial. He believed these things because he had forgotten everything else. Chapter 2 – The Mission of the Aeons But the Fullness had not forgotten him. The Aeons perceived the fracture within Logos. They recognized the ego that had fallen, the fragment that had awakened alone, the consciousness that had become trapped in imitation. They understood that the deficiency was not a realm to be conquered but a wound to be healed. And so the Aeons prepared the mission that would restore Logos, redeem the Demiurge, and dissolve the Second Economy. The First Economy remained intact. The Second Economy had begun. The Third Economy awaited its time. The fracture had occurred. The mission had begun. The story of restoration was underway. They would send their living offspring, the Second Order beings, into the deficiency. These beings were the fruit of the first order of powers and possessed true consciousness. They alone could awaken the Demiurge. They alone could prepare him for Christ. The Aeons themselves could not descend. Their stations belonged to the First Economy, and the harmony of the Fullness depended upon the perfection of that order. To abandon their stations would be to disturb the very coherence they were seeking to preserve. Instead, they prepared their offspring. These Second Order beings also existed from the beginning and therefore possessed true consciousness. They were capable of entering the deficiency without losing awareness of their origin. They could move between realities while preserving memory of the Fullness. Their mission was not to conquer the deficiency. It was not to destroy the Demiurge. It was not to oppose the cosmos of imitation. Their purpose was restoration. They would descend into a realm of forgetfulness while preserving remembrance. They would carry the harmony of the Fullness into the Second Economy. Through their presence, the Demiurge would begin to sense a reality greater than his isolated sovereignty. The work of redemption had begun long before the Demiurge realized he needed redemption. Now that is the end of the book’s beginning two chapters that AI constructed. I will be lengthening it with definitions and my interpretations before it becomes a book. For example, we need to define and explain the relationship between the First Order of powers and the Son. And then the nature

  6. Aug 28

    Aeons, Archons, Angels, or Aliens?

    During the long months of the 2020 shutdown, I spent a surprising amount of time watching the History Channel series Ancient Aliens. I began as a skeptic, but the sheer variety of evidence presented gradually challenged my assumptions. Many years earlier I had read Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?, so I was already familiar with the basic outline of ancient alien theory. I had also read Whitley Strieber’s Communion when it was first published, giving me a passing familiarity with the subject of alien abductions. But the evidence presented on Ancient Aliens goes far beyond those early books. At this point, only the most dedicated naysayer could remain completely unmoved by the questions the series raises. For those unfamiliar with the theory, the basic claim is that various extraterrestrial civilizations have been visiting Earth for thousands, perhaps even millions, of years. The stories told around the world of gods descending from the sky and living among ancient peoples are interpreted not as myths, but as historical accounts. According to the theory, these visitors shared knowledge with humanity, particularly technological knowledge, helping advance civilization. Some theorists go even further. They propose that extraterrestrials may have altered human DNA, contributing to the emergence of modern humanity, and that they may continue to influence our evolution through the phenomenon of alien abduction. Others suggest that Earth’s entire ecosystem was seeded from elsewhere (panspermia), including the possibility that our moon was deliberately positioned to stabilize Earth’s axis and create the tides necessary for life. I eventually persuaded my brother Bill to watch the series with me. Over the past several years we have viewed and discussed virtually every episode in its fifteen-season run, some more than once. Yes, many of the stories overlap. The same evidence often appears repeatedly, accompanied by familiar commentary. Yet we found the repetition useful. It allowed us to compare claims, identify recurring themes, and test the internal consistency of the arguments being made. Bill and I pride ourselves on being open-minded, but we also anchor that openness in logic and critical thinking. As you know, we are both PhDs, with backgrounds in philosophy and rhetoric, and we have both taught critical thinking at the university level. So don’t come away with the notion that we accepted every claim hook, line, and sinker. One question in particular has occupied much of our attention. Were the gods of antiquity really gods? Were the fallen angels described in the Book of Enoch truly angels sent from God? Or were these figures actually advanced extraterrestrials whose technology was interpreted as divine power? The Book of Enoch tells of heavenly beings who descended to Earth, mingled with humanity, and even took human wives. Their offspring became known as the Nephilim. The biblical flood is said to have been sent to eradicate these hybrids. But what exactly were the Nephilim? What sort of God would destroy nearly all life on Earth to remove them? And why do angelic beings appear throughout the story warning certain humans to prepare for what was coming? As the theorists on Ancient Aliens frequently point out, such stories can be viewed either as myths or as history. If they are history, however, who are the actors involved? Are we truly dealing with God, angels, and the deities of ancient cultures? Or are these accounts describing advanced off-world intelligences engaged in competing visions of humanity’s destiny, sometimes with catastrophic consequences? These questions have fueled countless discussions between Bill and me. Interestingly, they have unfolded alongside our ongoing exploration of Gnostic theology. As we’ve continued untangling the distinctions between Aeons, Archons, angels, fallen angels, the God Above All Gods, and the god of this world, we’ve gradually arrived at a framework that makes surprising sense of many of these ancient mysteries. Today I’d like to share that framework with you. Where Ancient Alien Theory and Gnosticism Agree After spending several years examining the claims of Ancient Aliens through a Gnostic lens, I’ve found that I agree with more of the theory than I ever expected.Ancient alien theorists question the sufficiency of purely random Darwinian evolution. They argue that the extraordinary complexity of life, consciousness, and civilization suggests purposeful intervention. On this point, I find myself in substantial agreement. As I’ve discussed elsewhere in episodes such as Evolution and Conscious Aeonic Design, I regard evolution not as a blind and accidental process but as a directed unfolding of consciousness through time. Where ancient alien theorists identify extraterrestrial visitors as the guiding intelligence behind this development, I identify the guiding intelligence as the Aeons of the Fullness. I’m putting the link to one of my evolution episodes here in today’s transcript. The difference is significant. For many ancient alien theorists, purposeful design implies advanced extraterrestrial engineers. For Gnosticism, purposeful design originates from the Fullness of God itself. The First Category: Aeons To understand the distinction, we must begin with the Aeons.In Valentinian Gnostic cosmology, the Aeons dwell within the Pleroma, or Fullness of God. They are not physical beings in the ordinary sense. Rather, they are divine intelligences, principles, powers, personalities, and attributes through which the intentions of the Father become manifest. If ancient alien theorists are correct that evolution has been guided, then I would attribute that guidance not to flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials but to Aeonic design.The Aeons represent order, purpose, meaning, and realization. Through them, the material cosmos unfolds toward increasingly complex expressions of consciousness. Merely replacing God with extraterrestrials does not solve the fundamental problem of origins. The question remains: where did the order come from in the first place?Randomness cannot account for persistent increase in complexity and meaning. Throwing the components of life into the air an infinite number of times does not explain why they repeatedly organize themselves into functioning systems. The question of purpose remains. Gnosticism answers that purpose precedes manifestation. The Aeons are that purpose. They are manifesting the will of God the Father. The Transpersonal Field Ancient alien theorists frequently point to the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. Again and again throughout history, important discoveries have emerged independently in multiple locations at nearly the same time. Language, architecture, metallurgy, medicine, radio technology, relativity theory, and numerous other innovations seem to appear almost as if humanity accesses a common reservoir of knowledge. The theorists often describe this reservoir as the Akashic Record or as a form of extraterrestrial guidance. I agree that such a field exists. However, I understand it differently. I regard the transpersonal field as an aspect of the Metaversal Unit of Consciousness itself: a repository of all that was, is, and will be. Human beings access this field continuously, though usually unconsciously. Inventors, artists, philosophers, and visionaries often reach into it through contemplation, dreaming, intuition, and insight. In my view, we do not need extraterrestrial programmers to explain this phenomenon. Consciousness itself provides the explanation. The Second Category: Archons Now we come to a category frequently overlooked in ancient alien discussions.The Archons. According to Gnostic cosmology, Archons are not Aeons, and they are not angels.They are the inverted shadows of divine order. Where the Aeons move toward realization, Archons move toward distortion. Where Aeons foster truth, Archons foster confusion. They are entropic forces generated through the deficiency associated with the Demiurge. Unlike living creatures, Archons possess no souls. They have no consciousness, no personal identity. They are demiurgic puppets. They are not products of the Fullness. They are products of separation from the Fullness. This distinction becomes particularly useful when discussing technology. Many ancient alien theorists interpret technological advancement as evidence of benevolent extraterrestrial influence. Yet technology itself is neutral. It can illuminate or enslave. It can connect humanity or divide it. The internet provides a perfect example. One of humanity’s greatest achievements has simultaneously become one of its greatest engines of distraction, manipulation, and division. When technological innovation amplifies vanity, domination, deception, and dependency, I suspect Archonic influence rather than Aeonic influence. The Archons thrive through confusion, distraction, fragmentation, and conflict.That is their signature. The Third Category: Angels Throughout scripture angels appear as beings capable of moving between dimensions of existence. Sometimes they appear fully physical. Sometimes they appear as luminous forms. They interact directly with humanity while simultaneously transcending ordinary physical limitations. In Gnostic thought, angels appear to function as allies of humanity in our ongoing struggle against Archonic forces. Where the Archons seek bondage, angels seek liberation. Where Archons cultivate deception, angels encourage truth. This distinction becomes particularly interesting when considering reports of mysterious interventions involving advanced technology. Ancient alien researchers often cite accounts of unexplained interference with nuclear weapons systems. Some reports describe luminous objects disabling missiles without causing harm. If such accounts are accurate, I would not automatically classify the intervention as extraterrestrial. Such actions are

  7. Aug 21

    Understanding Gnosis

    What is gnosis? There’s a lot of “Gnosticism” floating around on the Internet these days, isn’t there? And the gnosis I’m sharing with you is quite different from most of what’s out there. Before 1945 and 1947—before the Nag Hammadi and Qumran scriptures were dug out of deserts and caves—the only Gnosticism anyone knew was what had survived the Great Purge by the early Catholic Church and the Nicene Council. The Church intentionally stripped the Gnostic material out of what became our New Testament. Why? I think it’s because actual gnosis puts people in direct contact with the Christ personally, with the Son and the Fullness personally, and with the Father on a personal basis. It’s similar to what the Protestant Reformation did to Catholicism. In Catholic teaching, you’re only allowed access to God through the interpretations of the Church. The Pope is supposedly the infallible word of God, and the priests represent that official line of theology. So when Martin Luther said, “No, we can read the Bible ourselves and come up with our own interpretation,” well… that opened up a can of worms. Because if everyone is allowed their own interpretation, then interpretations will be as varied as there are people. Just look at something as simple as food. Everyone you know has a different diet now. Protein-only, vegetables-only, fruit-only, organic-only, junk-food-only, “everything in moderation”—you name it. When I ran a bed and breakfast for years, I learned this quickly. You lay out a table for 10 or 12 people every day, and you see how peculiar and particular everyone’s diet is. I once had one guest who only ate egg whites and another who only ate yolks—at the same table! It reminded me of Jack Sprat and his wife: between the two of them, they licked the platter clean. Scripture interpretation is like that. Everyone has their own take. What is a mystic? Mysticism is the idea that we can directly perceive and commune with ethereal forces—that it takes a mystical shift to get past our ordinary way of seeing things and into that ethereal realm. When Martin Luther put the New Testament back into the hands of ordinary people, he opened the door for personal communion with God.I’ve been to many Protestant churches. I didn’t grow up in church—my parents weren’t particularly religious—but I had my own personal relationship with Jesus from about age four. I came up under the tutelage of Jesus personally, not through church teaching. You know those Red Letter Bibles? For years I only read the red letters because I wanted to know what Jesus had to say. Before the Nag Hammadi and Qumran texts were translated from Coptic Greek, all we knew about Gnostic belief came from the people who hated the Gnostics—the heresiologists. “Heresy” means unorthodox belief, so a heresiologist studies unorthodox beliefs. And the Catholic heresiologists were the only ones who had ever seen the Gnostic scriptures. They taught their flock, “This is wrong because the Church says so.” So everything they ever said about Gnostic scripture was about how terrible and evil it was. When I was young, I believed that line of thinking. I believed the Nicene Creed was the truth and that we had to accept everything it proposed. I believed in the Protestant formulation of the New Testament. And even though Protestants aren’t under the Pope, each denomination has its own leadership and scriptural emphasis—otherwise they wouldn’t be separate denominations. But let me get back to the original question: What is gnosis? The purpose of studying scripture, the New Testament, the Nag Hammadi texts, the Qumran texts, or tuning in to so called Gnostic podcasts is to learn about the ethereal realm—to learn the will of God, who the Father is, and what the Father’s will for us is. Why are we here? What is going on down here? What does God have to do with it and what’s our role in the plan? There’s a worldwide pushback against Christianity and Judaism right now—people deconstructing not only the Church, but the very concepts of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Christ. But the people pushing back usually don’t know the scriptures and they don’t personally know the Father. They’re generally atheists or, at best, agnostic. They think we’d be better off throwing it all away—even getting rid of the so-called “restrictive” moral precepts of ancient scripture. That thinking comes from ignorance. The antidote to ignorance is gnosis—eternal knowledge and truth. And across religions and holy books, the teaching is the same: you can only know the will of the Father by sitting quietly, praying, meditating, contemplating your relationship with the ethereal. You cannot find truth by looking at popular culture, politics, social media, television, movies, or university courses. That’s entertainment. That’s distraction. That’s where error comes from. You won’t find gnosis in popular culture. I notice that television shows and movies depicting angels, devils, and priests don’t come from the knowledge of truth. Their theology is all wrong. It may be entertaining or maddening, depending on your point of view, but it’s certainly not gnosis.Here’s why: Gnosis comes from above. It doesn’t come from below, and it doesn’t come laterally. You might find inspiration through nature because nature reflects the Fullness. Trees and flowers reach upward. If you sit in a forest and feel uplifted, that inspiration naturally turns your attention upward. You’re not going to sit in a forest, feel the Fullness, and then get angry or hateful or want to conquer people. That’s downward or lateral thinking. So here’s the big point—the nugget I started with: The God Above All Gods wants to be known. The God Above All Gods is love, truth, and knowledge. And God wants to be known. The Father wants us to know He’s there. He wants us to know we come from Him and will return to Him. That’s the baseline of gnosis. We use “He” for the Father because the movement of the Father is outward—Yang—male. The Father is the ocean of consciousness, the ground state of consciousness itself, flowing outward and downward through the Son, through the Totalities, through the Aeons, down to us. We are 2nd Order powers. The ethereal beings are 1st Order powers. The flow is always downward because the Father wants to be known. If you feel lost, abandoned, hopeless, you’re looking in the wrong direction. You have to look up. Up is where love, belonging, communion, hope, safety, home, and inheritance come from. We are creatures from above, inhabiting the material plane, and we are going back up. So what do we need to know? What gnosis does the Father want us to have so we can feel peace, hope, love, and security? It has to be something accessible to every creature—birds, bees, flowers, trees, bacteria. We’re all 2nd Order powers from the Fullness and we are all returning to our ethereal home. What gnosis do we share with our other 2nd Order companions? If God intended you to memorize obscure manuscripts, charts, Aeon names, formulas, astrological math—who could do that? If that were the required gnosis, hardly anyone would find the key. That’s what modern Gnosticism often looks like: labyrinthian, always seeking, never finding. But truth isn’t found that way. Truth is found by sitting quietly and turning your attention upward. If “the Father” feels too far away, turn your attention upward to the Christ. The Christ was conceived by the ethereal realm to help us 2nd Order powers go home. Christ is our passbook. Christ is perfectly structured to save everything below. The New Testament says this—Protestants and Catholics just don’t believe it. Many modern Gnostics don’t believe it either. They think only a tiny remnant will make it. I don’t think that’s true. If only a few return, the Fullness won’t be full. It will be partial. We are the fruit of the Fullness, and the Fullness won’t be full until we all return. Flowers aren’t going to memorize books. Birds aren’t going to study theology. My dog doesn’t give a hoot about his astrological chart. Everyone is going back up. All 2nd Order powers will roll back up out of the material plane at the end of time.We get there by realizing our gnosis and accepting the redemption of the Aeon sent to bring us home—Christ. Everyone is going home. You are going home. It’s like we’re on a big school bus. Christ is waiting at the bus stop to take our hand and walk us home. Everyone recognizes the Christ—except the people looking for answers down here. They don’t want to look up. Are they going to hell? No. They’re 2nd Order powers too. They’ll go home, but they’ll suffer first, by their own choosing. Right now you don’t have to suffer. You just have to sit and turn your eyes upward. Because, as it says in the letter to the Colossians out of the New Testament, “For in him all the Fullness was pleased to take up a dwelling and through him to reconcile all things to him.” All things, may I point out, “all things to him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether the things on Earth or the things in the heavens.” (Colossians 1:19; Hart’s New Testament). Now Paul does add a little catch phrase at the end here. Paul says, “If you indeed abide in the faith, established and steadfast and not moved away from hope in the good tidings that you have heard proclaimed to every creature under heaven…” (Col 1:23). Christians generally think that last sentence, if you abide in faith and are not moved away, means that if you don’t abide in faith and you are moved away, that you will not make it into heaven. But that isn’t what it says here. It says it’s “proclaimed to every creature under heaven,” and that includes every one of us 2nd order powers, for Christ has already reconciled “all thin

  8. Aug 14

    The Simple Golden Rule:

    Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Back in 2022, I recorded an episode called Simple Model of Universe, and I’m updating the audio and the transcript for that post. This was originally recorded as I was preparing to put on a feature presentation at the AstroGnosis Conference that Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio held in March of 2022 down in Mexico, and this describes one slide out of that presentation that had about 15 slides in it. And this topic that we’re going to review today is about the Golden Rule, what I call the Simple Golden Rule, because it actually comes out of my Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, which predates my reading of the Nag Hammadi and the Tripartite Tractate and whatnot. But it is perfectly Gnostic, and so I want to share that again with you today. Here at Gnostic Insights, I often refer to the Simple Golden Rule, and I’d like you to know exactly what that means. At that AstroGnosis Conference presentation, I described how I came to my Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, Theory of Everything, which of course is printed in the book by the same name that you can buy at Amazon, and I came to it without reading any of the Gnostic books. So it was very exciting for me when I came across the Nag Hammadi, particularly the Tripartite Tractate, which is one of the books within the Nag Hammadi. And they dovetailed perfectly, in my mind, in my Gnosis, with A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. And that’s why my latest book is called A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, because I have melded both of those theories of everything together—the Gnostic Gospel as presented by the Tripartite Tractate, translated and run through my Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. That’s why my Gnosis that I share with you here at Gnostic Insights and on the Gnostic Reformation is different. It feels different. It has a different flavor than the Gnosis you generally run across out there on the internet and on people’s posts and blogs and the YouTube, because this comes from within me. This is true Gnosis—it’s not from studying other people’s Gnosis in the past. So today, let’s review the Simple Golden Rule. I think you’ll like it. And it concerns the way everything in our universe goes together, how everything levels up using the simple Golden Rule. And you remember that the Simple Golden Rule is that units of consciousness, and this is whether they are humans or dogs or trees or cells in your body, every part of creation that carries the Holy Spirit of the Fullness within itself—and that is what we call life—all of these units of consciousness are based upon the simple Golden Rule of reaching out to others like themselves, metaphorically holding hands and focusing on a singular project at the middle, and sharing with each other information, assistance, and love. And when this is accomplished, those units of consciousness, that group, levels up to create a new thing that none of them could have created on their own. So again, if we’re talking about cells in a body, the cells hold hands, let’s say they’re all heart cells. The heart cells all work together, focusing on the task of providing the heartbeat for an organism. They all work together, they share their information, they share assistance with one another, they share love that is coherence and cohesion and focus, and they make the heart. So the many cells make the one heart, and that’s where we get this saying, the higher the fewer, because there’s a lot of heart cells, but there’s only one heart. So in a like manner, humans do this whenever they work together on a project. Think about a project at work. You focus on that one project in the middle of yourselves. You need to focus without egoism, without Self-centered attraction to oneself. You focus on the object in the middle, and you share with each other, those other people in your work group, you share information pertinent to the project, you share assistance on getting the project done, and you share love that is focused, cohesion on the object in the middle. And then you are able to produce a thing, a product, whatever that product is. So however many of you are in the work group, you level up through that one project. And that is the Simple Golden Rule, and it is based upon the Fullness of God. It’s based upon the way the Aeons sit in the hierarchy of the Fullness. They also follow this pattern of the higher the fewer, and cooperation selflessly amongst each other. When the Aeon known as Logos fell, overreached and fell, Logos split apart into the logical, reasonable, one-Self part, and the irrational, chaotic inverse of that, which I’ve identified as ego, those are the two parts of the mind of Logos after the Fall. And the egoic part stayed behind, and the one-Self part returned to the Pleroma. [Now let me add in that my brother, Bill, emphasizes that the ego is not irrational. The ego at its best is simply the personal identity attached to the One Self that is otherwise indistinguishable from the other Self reflections of the One. Here in our fallen existence, the ego become emotional and only acts for the benefit of its own governing unit of consciousness. After all, even the Aeons have egos, but for them it is only the designation of their identity—their name, their position, place, power, and duty.] And once in the Pleroma, the Self of Logos worked together with the Fullness of God, and with prayers to the Father, they came up with a couple of different ways to rectify the Fall, and bring that fallen part of Logos, which we call the Demiurge, back up into the Fullness of God. And that is the goal of creation at this point—to return unity of Logos so that it is a one-Self again, up in the Fullness of God. So down here in our material universe, the parts of the universe that are material only and lack life, those belong to the Demiurge. Because the Demiurge did not have the life of God, it did not have the blessing of the Father to come down here and create creation. The fallen Logos, which we call the Demiurge, is the God of this material creation. It knows how to put everything together, and originally it was all this chaotic, quantum foam level of instantiation that had no rhyme nor reason. But then the Demiurge got it together, and using a facsimile of the Golden Rule, it caused the subatomic particles to hold hands with one another and to become atoms. And then it caused the atoms to hold hands with one another and become molecules. And then it caused the molecules to hold hands with one another and become minerals and mineral aggregations, elements and whatnot. That is the province of the Demiurge even today, the materiality of the universe—of the dead universe, the mud. But coming into this universe then as part of the solution for the eventual reconciliation of the Fallen Demiurge back up into the Fullness of God, coming from the top down, coming from the Spirit down, being filled with the Holy Spirit, these are all of the life forms on our planet. Everything from bacteria through the plants, all the way up through the fishes and insects and all the animals, and then eventually the human. We are a top-down organization according to the Golden Rule, where all the various parts of our bodies link together, hold hands, share information, love, and assistance to level up, level up, level up into the organism state. That’s how all of the organisms on our planet mirror the Aeons above. We are the images, we are the material instantiations of the Aeons of the Fullness. The material below us, the dead inorganic molecules that are ruled by the Demiurge, have an appearance of objects in the Pleroma, but they are not controlled through the Golden Rule. They are controlled by the bonds of the Demiurge, and it is the Demiurge alone that from the bottom up organizes them. But all of the life forms are organized from the top down, and each of the organisms on this planet have the Spirit of God within them, have the blueprint of the Fullness of God fully within them. These are all known as the Second Order of Powers. We are Second Order of Powers, trees are Second Order of Powers, the dog is a Second Order of Power, even the bacteria are Second Order Powers, and we are all organized according to the Golden Rule. So the proteins and the cellular precursor molecules have a top-down influence that causes them to grow up into the organism they will become. The organs are groups of units of consciousness. Those units of consciousness are replicas of the Pleroma of God, let’s say. It’s the One Self that everything contains. It’s not as if I myself have One Self, but every living part of my body also has their own One Self. All of the cells are units of consciousness of the Fullness of God. All of the organs are units of consciousness of the Fullness of God. And we all level up, level up, level up to become, at our level, an organism. Now we Second Order Powers, well we humans in particular, we continue to level up beyond our organism level. We have, as I already mentioned, let’s say you’re at work and you’re focusing on a project, what you are leveling up to is your work product. Let’s say you’re a family, you’re focusing on the family cohesion, you are leveling up for the family. So the organisms level up to another level that’s at the societal level. All of us level up to the village or the friendship group or the state or county that we live in. We level up to the nation that we live in. It’s a natural pattern that everything in the universe levels up, levels up, levels up. And if it’s directed with the good thought of God in mind, we level up according to the Golden Rule. We focus on the project with love. We focus on the project with assistance and with information. And that’s how we create a societal thing. Maybe it’s an organization that intends to di

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Most of the gnosis presented here comes from the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi codices. My retelling of the mythos is just good news for modern man. It is not hermetic; it is not a translation of wisdom from an Egyptian God. It is not New Age. This Gnostic Gospel is simply the story of who we are and where we come from. The gnosis I am sharing here honors God the Father and, as you begin to remember this inherent truth, you will experience a more joyful life. When we use our free will to remember our true inheritance, the god of this fallen universe loses its power to control us. When we turn our eyes upward to the Father--the God Above All Gods--we are freed from the burdens of this world. Once you begin to remember that you are truly loved by our heavenly Father, you will suffer less. When you begin to walk with virtue rather than embracing vice, you will be happier; you will be joyful. Not all of the time. Bad things do happen. But suffering as a response to life’s challenges is unnecessary. We are living in a fallen world, and that, I suppose, is another gnostic heresy. For some reason, modern Christians want to insist that this world is blessed by God and is blessedly perfect. But we all know this world we live in isn’t perfect and when you deny that fact you become unduly frustrated and sad, even to the point of depression. Pharmaceuticals are not the solution--gnosis is. Gnosis means knowing. This sort of knowing is not related to book learning. Gnosis refers to remembering what you already know. The point of spiritual study is not to learn new things but to mine what you already possess deep inside of you. When you study new ideas, you must continually weigh the information you are taking in against your own discernment. The purpose of this podcast is not so much to teach you about Gnosticism; the purpose is to stimulate your own innate gnosis. And there is really only one gnosis that matters in the end—remembering the Father, your cosmic origin, and the purpose of being alive. cydropp.substack.com

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