Gnostic Insights

Cyd Ropp, Ph.D.
  • 4.7 (20)
  • SPIRITUALITY
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Gnostic Insights

Here you will find podcasts that explain gnosis, as simply as humanly possible. What is gnosis? Gnosis is knowing. Gnosis is not faith, or studying, or imagining. Gnosis is remembering. Remembering who you are, why you are here, what your mission on earth is, and where you will go when you die. Gnosis involves remembering the origin of consciousness and creation. The who, what, when, where, and why of everything.

  1. 12/23/2022

    Fractal Consciousness Becomes Self-Aware

    The Father is consciousness itself, and off of that initial consciousness come fractals that are each a unit of consciousness. The Universal Unit of Consciousness that we call "the Son" is the largest fractal that we are aware of and it holds all of the blueprints and all of the potentialities for our entire universe, as thought arising out of the originating Father’s consciousness. Each one of the fractal iterations that come off of that Universal Unit of Consciousness also holds the potentiality of the Father as expressed by the Son. These fractal potentialities are first expressed as the combination of traits called the Pleroma of God, also known as the Fullness of God. When the Fullness sits in its unified perfection, ALL of the traits of the Son are on full display. “While they were in the Father’s thought, that is, in the hidden depth, the depth knew them, but they were unable to know the depth in which they were. Nor was it possible for them to know themselves, nor for them to know anything else. That is, they were with the Father and they did not exist for themselves. Rather, they only had existence in the manner of a seed, so that it has been discovered that they were like a fetus.” “The one who first thought of them, the Father, — not only so that they might exist for him, but also that they might exist for themselves as well, that they might then exist in his thought as mental substance and that they might exist for themselves too, — sowed a thought like a spermatic seed.” So, in other words, the Father wants them to wake up. The Father is spreading consciousness, awakened consciousness, throughout the entire body of the Son. He doesn’t want them only to be unthinking constituents of the Son, making up the overall body of the Son. The Father wants them all to have their own existence and their own realizations, their own consciousness, their own Self. The Tripartite Tractate describes them “like seeds in need of gaining nourishment and growth.” The Tripartite Tractate says that the first step in bringing awareness to the Totalities was to give them “the perfect idea of beneficence toward them.” Meaning that even though they didn’t yet know themselves, what they did know was that they were loved. That is all they knew: that they had a benefactor. Somebody cared for them and wanted only good for them. They awoke to Self realization because someone loved them. This beneficence was their first knowledge. “There is no need for voice and spirit, mind and word, because there is no need to work at that which they desire to do, but on the pattern by which he was existing, so are those who have come forth from him, begetting everything which they desire. And the one whom they conceive of, and whom they speak about, and the one toward whom they move, and the one in whom they are, and the one whom they hymn, thereby glorifying him, he has sons. For this is their procreative power, like those from whom they have come, according to their mutual assistance, since they assist one another like the unbegotten ones.” The Son emerges from the Father as the First Glory. The Only Begotten Son. The moment the Son was formed, the ALL emerged. The ALL wears the Son like a garment, and the Son wears the ALL. They are co-existent. The Fullness of God is the Holy Spirit of the Father bursting out into individualized, fractal units of consciousness.

    29 min

  2. 12/31/2022

    The Aeons Give Glory and Generate Logos

    By this point in the Tripartite Tractate, the Son comes to be referred to as the Father, because the Son is the Father of the Second Glory—the Aeons of the Fullness. We see here that the Son, although a singular monad, is still a unity of many Aeons. The Son becomes knowable through the innumerable properties and names of the Aeons. These functional identities include names like flower, tree, dog, human, even parts of living bodies who themselves are alive, like kidney cells. The Aeons then arranged themselves into a hierarchy of “minds of minds, which are found to be words of words, elders of elders, degrees of degrees, which are exalted above one another. Each one of those who give glory has his place and his exaltation and his dwelling and his rest, which consists of the glory which he brings forth.” The Aeons agreed on everything and they cooperated together to bring about a single dream of Paradise. You could note one difference between the ALL and the Fullness is that, while the ALL sings their songs in blissful unison, the Fullness sings their songs in perfectly tuned, multi-toned harmony. In addition to their identities, the Aeons of the Fullness were all given wisdom, which is the ability to reason with logic and prudence. They were given a thirst to seek after the originating consciousness of their Creator and a desire to align themselves with the Father’s Will through the process of giving glory. And they were all creative geniuses, able to dream up a fully functioning mental Paradise where whatever they willed in the Father’s name happily happened. This dream of Paradise is our foretaste of heaven, shared by cultures around the world. The hierarchy of the Fullness of God sits as One and dreams of Paradise. The Aeon known as Logos was the last Aeon to be generated by the Aeons giving glory to the Father. Logos topped the Hierarchy of the Fullness as a perfect fractal copy of all the other Aeons.

    19 min

  3. 01/07/2023

    Logos–Ego Led Him Astray

    Ego is the designation of individual points of view. For Aeons, the Ego does not imply self-centeredness as we humans think of it, but simply the title for their names, stations, ranks, duties, and locations. Although the Aeons still dwelt within the single body of the Fullness, they were now each an independent Self with their own consciousness, identity, and will. Their variety required them to work together in order to remain in full agreement, for only through their union could they approach the Father's greatness. Here at Gnostic Insights and at  A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything blog and book, we call that cooperative spirit and pattern The Simple Golden Rule. The aeons name themselves and sort themselves into a hierarchy The Simple Golden Rule says that in order to build something greater than any of us can build on our own, we need to reach out to our neighbors with love, information, and assistance to work together on a common project for the betterment of all. This pattern of cooperation is part of the Aeonic order, and we here in this universe have inherited this ability as a fractal pattern from above. It is our common Self and the Holy Spirit of love that enables individual Egos to work together for the betterment of all. In Valentinian Gnosticism, Logos is the Aeon who fell. Verses 75 and 76 of the Tripartite Tractate describes the nature of Logos and how and why Logos fell. 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. Logos stumbles and Falls while reaching for Glory. This is our archetypal story, our pre-history as fruit of the Aeons. All this time we've been blaming the Fall on this ignorant, willful, Aeon Logos, but now the Tripartite Tractate is admitting that, honestly, it wasn't without the knowledge and will of the Originator, of the great Father, because of course nothing on the ethereal plane exists without the Father's will. We have inherited that will and it passed down through all of us creatures here below. The Father declared that it was fitting that “they should come into being,” and “they” is us. So we were part of the plan from the beginning. We were not accidents. We were not formed from a mistake.

    33 min

  4. 01/14/2023

    Ego Falls and Forgets

    It came to pass that the Aeon named Logos mistook himself for the original Pleroma of the Son of God, confusing the small, fractal copies within himself for the Totality of the Fullness. Feeling the fullness of glory within himself, Logos decided to give glory to the source of his awakening and launched himself from the Hierarchy in an attempt to reconnect with the Father. Logos believed his personal will was sufficient to reach the Father without adding the will of the united Fullness to his own. As Logos reached for the Father, Logos stumbled and fell, shattering himself to bits. We refer to this as the original Fall. It’s not Eve handing Adam an apple in the garden of Eden. This is the Fall: Logos reaching for the Father, stumbling, and falling. “His self-exaltation and his expectation of comprehending the incomprehensible became firm for him and was in him. But the sicknesses followed him when he went beyond himself, having come into being from self-doubt, namely from the fact that he did not the glories of the Father, the one whose exalted status is among things unlimited." The division of the deeply troubled Logos was the first manifestation of Ego acting outside of the will of the One Self and the Fullness. The Fall was caused by an act of Ego falling away from the Self. The Tripartite Tractate calls the Ego “presumptuous thought.” And isn’t that what egoic thought is? It’s presumptuous, meaning going beyond what is right and proper. Egoic thought places the focus of thought on one’s own desires without regard to others. What am I going to do? Presumptuous thought is all about me, me, me. The Aeons of the Fullness are not me types of creatures. The Aeons all live for one another: “All for one, and one for all.” My Self is at the center of my consciousness, aligned with the Fullness and the Father. Ego looks inward and outward at the world, not onward and upward at the Father.

    28 min

  5. 01/21/2023

    The New Economy Arises–the Boundary and the Demiurge

    Logos Fell because his egoic striving lead him away from the Fullness of God. He immediately recognized his mistake and tried to correct it on his own, but he couldn't stuff the genie back in the bottle and the deficiency spread. Logos came to a new understanding of the situation and he realized the hopelessness of correcting it on his own. Once he realized this, Logos was able to remember the Aeons of the Fullness—those things that exist—and he responded to a prayer for “the one who had converted himself to the good" offered by the Aeons on his behalf to bring him home. The Pleroma of Logos was fully restored through remembering the One source of consciousness and the Fullness of God. The fractal body of Logos as images of the Fullness was restored; only his presumptuous Ego was left behind in the simulation. As Logos retreated to its own in the Fullness, the Father placed a Boundary around the area containing that which had been produced as a consequence of the Fall. The purpose of this Boundary was to separate finitude from infinity, ignorance from truth, and light from darkness. The Boundary surrounds the phantoms of the imitation Another essential purpose of the Boundary was to establish an “economy” for a system about to unfold. The Boundary was established so that a hierarchy patterned after the Fullness would have space to take root and grow. The arrangement of the Hierarchy of the Fullness shows up throughout creation. Every small thing in our universe reaches out laterally to others to form clumps or aggregations of the next level up. Subatomic particles form atoms, atoms form molecules, molecules form elements. Elements form aggregations of building materials, always according to the Simple Golden Rule of the higher the fewer. This is why hierarchies look like pyramids at each level of aggregation–there are fewer instances of things forming the next level up. The Demiurge is the creator god of this universe we live in. To faithful Hebrews and Christians, the name of the Demiurge is Yahweh or Jehovah. Other world religions have other names for this creator god. Stories of Jehovah fill the Old Testament and carry forward into the New Testament. However, an interesting thing about gnosticism is the declaration that there is another God who is called the Father–the God Above All Gods in gnostic theology. And in gnostic Christianity, the God Above All Gods is actually the Father to whom Jesus prayed. When Jesus said, “I and my Father are One,” and, “If you have seen me, you have seen my Father,” the God he is referring to is not Jehovah; the God Jesus is referring to is the God Above All Gods. Logos appointed an Archon to bring order to the chaos. This Archon is what we call the Demiurge. The Demiurge is able to control matter. “The things which he has spoken he does.” The book of Genesis attributes these actions of the Demiurge to Jehovah when it says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” The Pleroma of the Demiurge organizes lifeless material from the bottom up. The Demiurge works in a very different manner than the Fullness of God. The Pleroma of the Aeons in the Fullness metaphorically hold hands with one another as they share information, love, and assistance, and together they dream of Paradise. The way the Demiurge brings order to its creation is through strings of power. The Demiurge strictly controls everything in our material portion of the universe using strong strings of power, like a puppet master. In chemistry and physics these strings of power are called valances and bonds–the bonds that hold the chemistry together. Those are literally the bonds of the Demiurge. The material,

    30 min

  6. 01/28/2023

    The Second Pleroma of Logos

    Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. I mentioned on the audio of this podcast that I would post the link to my new interview with Tessa Lena on her substack podcast, Tessa Fights Robots. Hers is a video podcast, so you can watch as well as listen if you would like. Unusual Podcast Episode: A Conversation with Cyd Ropp (substack.com) Now on with this week's Gnostic Insights podcast. As you know, I am repeating the Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel episodes that we completed in November of 2022. You can find all 21 episodes of that series at gnosticinsights.com under the Tab labeled A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospels. We're in the process of reviewing that gnosis to give you an opportunity to understand it better this time around. I am also working now on the book version that will be published soon. For new listeners, if you are joining us for the first time you may want to back up 7 episodes to the beginning of this review cycle, or go to that tab I mentioned on the Gnostic Insights website to catch up. The restored pleroma of Logos and the Hierarchy of the Fullness conceive a new fruit called 2nd Order Powers “After he was amazed at the beauty of the ones who had appeared to him, he professed gratitude for this visitation. The Logos performed this activity, through those from whom he had received aid, for the stability of those who had come into being because of him and so that they might receive something good, since he thought to pray for the organization of all those who came forth from him, which is stabilized, so that it might make them established. Therefore, those whom he intentionally produced are in chariots, just as those who came into being, those who have appeared, so that they might pass through every place of things which are below, so that each one might be given the place which is constituted as he is.” This word “chariots” is interesting and often talked about. People wonder who and what came in chariots and what their mission was. This verse says that the Second Order Powers that Logos intentionally produced were sent down in chariots “so that they might pass through every place of things which are below, so that each one might be given the place which is constituted as he is.” Chariots means vessels, which people sometimes interpret as space ships, for example, which would mean that the Second Order Power are ETs. That would be an example of a modern mythological interpretation currently making the rounds. My interpretation of chariots is not mythological, but biological. Every living creature is composed of cells. These cells are contained within their own boundaries called cell walls. I believe the most straight-forward interpretation of the chariots of the Second Order Powers is that the chariots are their own, individual boundaries that contain them and hold the life within: cell walls. Every living organism on the planet begins with a cellular mechanism contained within a vessel wrapped in a cell wall. Cells are small and additive. They fulfill what the verse says: they “pass through every place of things which are below, so that each one might be given the place which is constituted as he is.” In other words, every organism builds itself up through cells that develop into a creature “constituted as he is.” The newly produced offspring of the Logos were patterned after the original Aeons of the Fullness; they are fractals of Aeons and fractal iterations of Logos. The First Order of Powers were the original Aeons of the Fullness. The Second Order of Powers is the fruit of Logos when he remembered his brothers in the Fullness and the Father. Because Logos was within the Boundary as he remembered,

    25 min

  7. 02/04/2023

    Lust for Domination

    In the previous episode, we heard how the fallen Aeon named  Logos unexpectedly found himself in a new dimension referred to as the deficiency or the imitation. This dimension resembles the dreams of the Aeons of the Fullness, but in a knock-off type of inferior form. The imitation is all shadows and mirrors without truth or life. Logos was horrified by what had emerged from him as shadows and phantoms of his glorious Pleroma. The manifestation of our universal space and the apparent matter contained within it was caused by the movement of Logos–the Fall. It was the shadows of the Pleroma of Logos that emerged to form this universe. When Logos stopped trying to bully the shadows away, he turned from the presumptuous, egoic thought that had caused it all and began to remember his Self and the Father and his brothers in the Fullness. This remembrance allowed Logos to return home. Logos and the Fullness began to produce a new offspring designed to “upset those who were in the defect.” This fruit is called the Second Order of Powers and it differed from both the original Aeons of the Fullness and the shadows of the deficiency. Whereas those of the deficiency arose from the egoic thought that led Logos to overreach and fall, “those of the remembrance” arose from Logos having the good thought of the Father and the Fullness. Those of the deficiency represent phantoms and confusion, whereas the new fruit, the Second Order Powers, are filled with the Holy Spirit that confers the consciousness and life of the Father. The shadows of the deficiency that emerged from the Fall are small, dead, and ignorant of what came before. The Second Order Powers are emanations of the restored Logos, fitted into the Boundary. They come one by one to populate the cosmos with life. We Second Order Powers come from the Fullness above. Logos emanated us with all of the inherent virtues of the Fullness that arise from “harmony and mutual love.” We have a pre-disposition to seek and pray to the Father and we are born with a thought and idea of the One Consciousness of which we are all a part.  We are designed to work together in “unity and unanimity,” which mirrors the Simple Golden Rule.  And now a strange and tragic thing occurred. It turns out that when those of the remembrance came upon those of the imitation, they attempted to overthrow them out of an inherent sense of self-righteousness because, after all, the Second Order Powers are from “the good thought,” and the deficiency is not. The tragedy of what occurred next in this unfolding gnostic cosmogeny still affects us today, for no sooner did the Second Order of Powers begin manifesting on the material stage, they found themselves in mortal combat with the shadows of the imitation. The Tripartite Tractate says that the Second Order Powers “fought against the order of those of the likeness, while the order of those of the likeness wages war against the representations and acts against it alone, because of its wrath.” “The two orders assaulted one another, fighting for command because of their manner of being. As a result, they were submerged in forces and natures in accord with the condition of mutual assault, having lust for power and all other things of this sort. It is from these that the vain love of glory draws all of them to the desire of the lust for power, while none of them has the exalted thought nor acknowledges it…” We Second Order Powers continually battle the archons of the Fall. We are a mixed creation of life from above and death from below.

    29 min

  8. 02/11/2023

    Pleroma of the Christ–3rd Order Powers

    The complete transcript of these episodes is available for reading under the tab "A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel" at gnosticinsights.com, if you prefer reading to listening. We Second Order Powers have a dim remembrance of the Father and the Fullness above. As the fruit of Logos and the Fullness, our Self's orientation is always slightly upward and onward, even though we may continually fall back to egoic behavior. But, when push comes to shove, we Second Order Powers eventually look to the Father for help out of our suffering, as did Logos when he sought to escape the deficiency and return to the Fullness above. “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 Totalities, 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 bring forth the fruit.” The Third Order Powers constitute the pleroma of the Christ The Gnostic Gospel calls this new fruit the Christ. The Pleroma of the Christ is the Third Order of Powers, endowed with more capabilities than the First and Second Orders, because the Christ embodies the entirety of the ALL and the particularity of the consciousness of each of the individual Aeons of the Fullness, along with the full power of the Holy Spirit and the Son’s entire knowledge and remembrance of the ethereal and physical planes. This Third Order of Powers is fully equipped to bring remembrance and redemption to the Second Order Powers living in this fallen world and to the Demiurge. The emanation of the Christ brings all of the knowledge, power, and glory of the God Above All Gods through its Son and the Totalities into creation. The Christ is now in the process of bringing this gnosis to all Second Order Powers. There is a Third Order Power for each and every Second Order Power, and a Second Order Power for each and every shadow of the Fall. All we need to do is allow the Third Order Powers to take up residence within our individuated Pleromas. In this manner, the gnosis and love of the Christ will displace the shadows and bring redemption to us and through us. This is the true mission of Christianity. The cross of the Christ bridges above and below, and right and left.

    28 min
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About

Here you will find podcasts that explain gnosis, as simply as humanly possible. What is gnosis? Gnosis is knowing. Gnosis is not faith, or studying, or imagining. Gnosis is remembering. Remembering who you are, why you are here, what your mission on earth is, and where you will go when you die. Gnosis involves remembering the origin of consciousness and creation. The who, what, when, where, and why of everything.

Information

  • Creator
    Cyd Ropp, Ph.D.
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2022
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Gnostic Insights

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