A Simple Explanation of Gnostic Christianity and the Role of the Redeemer

The moment the Son was formed, he was no longer alone. For not only the Son, but the ALL arose at once. The ALL immediately appeared as the offspring of the Son, because the Son could not help himself from bringing others into existence, even as he was brought into existence by his Father. The Son and the Father are One, and the Father's creative Holy Spirit flows through the Son. With the birth of the ALL, the Son became a Father as well.

Welcome to the Simple Explanation blog. If you are at all curious about Gnostic Christianity, I have just written and posted an article explaining the role of Christ in Gnosticism. Please pop on over to my Gnostic blog and take a read by clicking here. This article is suitable for any Christian or Gnostic, particularly if you doubt the truth of the other side.

Here are the first couple of paragraphs from the article:

Gnosticism is the forerunner of the modern Christian faith. As such, a better understanding of the figure of the Christ is essential to understanding both Gnosticism and Christianity. The cosmology outlined below was well-known to Jesus and his original followers, but was cut out of Christianity about 1,700 years ago by the Nicene Council at the urging of the Pope and the Roman Emperor. Fortunately, a trove of 13 ancient Gnostic texts was discovered in 1945, dating back to the origins of Christianity. This collection is known as the Nag Hammadi codices.

Because this theology was subtracted from orthodox Christianity, many of the ideas of Gnostic cosmology sound odd and unfamiliar to modern church-goers. Some of the ideas even sound heretical at first glance, due to their unfamiliarity. Yet the theology contained in these early scriptures make sense of so many puzzling aspects of Christian faith that they must be reexamined. So, if you will bear with me, I will explain in very simple terms the key points of Gnostic belief. I am confident that once you understand Gnostic Christianity, you will better understand your relationship with God.

According to Gnostic cosmology as laid out in the Nag Hammadi, we humans and all other forms of life on earth, from bacteria and eukaryotes on up, are the "fruit" of the Pleroma and Logos. We Second Order Powers find ourselves locked in a never-ending battle for dominion over the earth with forces that were generated as a result of the Fall. Due to the law of mutual combat, we have forgotten our origin in the Fullness and our mission to bring love and harmony to creation, and have instead taken on many of the characteristics of the shadows of the Deficiency.

To finish the article, click here.

A Gnostic Perspective On Consciousness and Christianity

I just wrote and posted this as a comment on consciousness and Christianity over at the Skeptiko forum, but it seems too juicy to keep it from here. 

Is it possible for the Christian mythos to be in any way truthful and factual? Sure. But I'd say the Christian mythos that most closely resembles reality as we know it would be the Gnostic mythos, and it was weeded out of the canonical Bible and thrown away in 300 AD. I used to think the Pope and Emperor weeded it out for the good of the faithful, but now I realize they weeded it out for their own power to reign supreme. Yes, they left a lot of good in, but they weeded out the logos that makes the religion reasonable. So no wonder it looks superstitious and shallow. Thank God the Gnostic truths were buried out in the Nag Hammadi desert and resurrected intact during WW2. They have literally been protected from hundreds of years of theological misinterpretation.

I've been chewing this particular Gnosis over for about 50 years. See if this intrinsically coherent Gnostic Christian narrative is more satisfying to the Skeptik than the Orthodox view. I think it is, but it is no less Theistic, so if that's your quibble, I can't help you there. I think in order to understand Gnosis, one must start with a willing heart. If you hate God, then it is very difficult to appreciate Gnosis. Here goes:

According to the Tripartite Tractate Nag Hammadi book, we start with an underlying matrix of consciousness. (So, right off the bat, this ancient book acknowledges transcendent, undifferentiated consciousness.) This illimitable consciousness thought of a particularity, which became a fractal representation of the illimitable. This first fractal is called The Son. The Son immediately fanned out like rays from a light into an infinite number of particularities. The moment the particularities became conscious, because they, too, were fractals of the illimitable consciousness, they named themselves in order to know themselves. This naming had the effect of sorting themselves into a hierarchy of names, stations, ranks, positions, and powers. These are the Aeons, also known as the Pre-existent Church and the Elect, also called the First Order of Powers. The Aeons live in a place called the Pleroma, or the ALL, or the Fullness. Altogether, the Aeons of the Fullness represent the infinity of potentialities. They are of one accord, being simply the names of the qualities of their Father, who is called the Son of the originating One. This is the entire sum of the hidden knowledge of Gnosis that so frightened the Emperor and the Pope. We can catch glimpses of this cosmology, the Father, the Son, and the Aeons, in the canonical Bible, but not enough was left intact to make sense of it. Now we know.

The Aeons of the Fullness dream one dream that they ALL share. This is the dream of Paradise, which was the original Thought that set the whole ball rolling. The Aeons dream exactly as we dream, except they all share the same dream. This is a place we are also familiar with, we humans in our dreams. It is the foretaste of Heaven. It is the fragrance of Utopia. It is the place where we can fly. We all know it, according to the Tripartite Tractate. 

Then various things happen, an Aeon overreaches and wisdom becomes presumptuous thought. The Aeon Falls from the perfection of the Fullness. The Aeon breaks apart and little pieces of it become the seed of our material universe. The Aeons above in the Fullness dream up a Second Order of Powers that carry their Aeonic traits into this material plane. All archaea of our planet are Second Order Powers. It was decided that all of the Aeons would come to earth to clean up the mess and restore perfection to this creation that occurred because of the Fall. Every thing on earth contains innumerable Aeons instantiating consciousness into the mud. Our fables and Bible stories tell fractal stories of all lives; the same stories over and over and over again. They are real and they are metaphors. We are the children of angels; we are angels. We are all Fallen and need redemption.

The Christ Consciousness, according to the Tripartite Tractate, is the Third Order of Powers. The Christ Consciousness was designed to be the correcting algorithm for the Second Order Powers who'd been ensnared in the deception of the material delusion, also called the Imitation. Imitation of what? Imitation of the Paradise dreamed by the Aeons of the Fullness. The Christ is like a computer clean-up code that must be inserted in order to do its work of Redemption. Every soul needs to remember their eternal heritage in order to shake off this material plane and return to the Fullness. 

Here's where Jesus of Nazareth comes in--this was a human who carried the perfected Third Order Power of Christ into our material plane, and co-existed with the human genome donated from the mother. Fully God. Fully Human. First Adam perfectly incarnated. In this manner, all of the infinity of the ALL was at last incarnated, completing the cycle of coming one-by-one to our material plane. It wasn't so much Christ's sacrifice on the cross that took away the sins of the world, but his incarnation as a human and his personal Aeonic experience of separation, despair, and death. I think the emphasis is on the cross as a shape of top-to-bottom/spirit-to-mud and side-to-side/ALL inclusive.And what it means to be Redeemed by Christ as a pre-requisite to going to Heaven, well, yes, the Christ incarnated for the salvation of the ALL, and that includes us, but also the dogs and cats, and the trees and grasses. You name it. Jesus saves. Obviously the mission is larger than our belief in it or our capacity of comprehend the fullness.

You can read a much more detailed and coherent account (fully illustrated) in my own book called "The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated". It's all there.