My pleroma

In our last adventure, we looked at the Gnostic myth of creation as presented in The Secret Book of John, one of the ancient documents found at Nag Hammadi. As a story of God's origins and the subsequent creation of the material world, the myth is interesting but perhaps not particularly persuasive.

There is, however, another way of looking at it, which may have more relevance to most of us than the cosmological interpretation. We can view the story from a psychological angle, or perhaps more accurately, from the angle of one's personal spiritual growth.

If we were to retell the story that way, it would go something like this:

in the beginning there is pure awareness, our state of mind as a newborn infant. There is as yet no self-awareness, no separate sense of self.

At a certain point, self-awareness develops. The young child is able to distinguish between himself and the world around him – between the experiencer and what he perceives.

Along with self-awareness, a host of mental faculties gradually comes into existence, creating new mental constructs and categories in the child's mind and holding the promise of potentially unlimited development.

At this point, however, self-awareness takes a detour, evolving into the ego. The ego can be seen as a misshapen and incomplete form of self-awareness, cut off from much of the higher wisdom of the mind, isolated and arrogant.

The ego comes to see itself as the ruling power – in fact, as the most important thing there is. In effect, the ego becomes a kind of tin god, requiring subservience and banishing any thoughts or feelings that jeopardize its preeminence.

While the ego holds sway, the person's outlook is narrow, crabbed, often envious and spiteful, or greedy and acquisitive, or vengeful and malicious. The ego creates a kind of personal hell for the person in its thrall.

To escape the tyranny of the ego, what's required is the knowledge of higher spiritual realities. In other words, gnosis.

Gnosis allows the person to cast off the ego and ascend to a higher plane of psychological development and spiritual understanding. This ascent entails a reawakening of the forgotten mental faculties eclipsed by the ego. When the full range of these faculties has been restored, the person has achieved his full potential and has been, so to speak, united with the mind of God.

The parallels are pretty clear, but are even clearer if we place them side-by-side in this handy chart (click for a clearer, uncropped version) :

This way of looking at the story may make it more meaningful to some of us. How the Gnostics thought of it is an open question. Perhaps some of them saw it purely as cosmology and took it literally; they were probably the ones who felt the need for exhaustive lists of demons who could be called out in exorcisms. Perhaps others saw it both ways, as a cosmology and as a guide to one's personal life. And perhaps a few saw it exclusively as a psychological-spiritual guide, with the cosmological elements presented purely as camouflage to disguise the deeper truth from those who were not fully initiated.

Jesus is made to say (in Matthew 13:10-13) some words that may reflect a Gnostic influence, or at least the influence of esoteric doctrines in general, which conceal their highest truths from most seekers:

To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

Comments

[Roger Knights]

Wow!

[Anthony McCarthy]

The problem I have with gnosticism is that they inevitably imagine God as having a human mind with human limits and mistake their conception for God instead of just their conception.

That passage from Matthew would seem to indicate that we're not going to guess what those secrets are. To then say what they are is kind of at cross purposes.

[Steve Smith]

Hi Michael, I haven't posted in a long time, but this one really resonated with me. This is definitely a case of "He who has ears to hear" IMO. What the Evangelicals/Fundamentalists don't get about Jesus is that this was what he was teaching. "The kingdom of heaven is within you". Explicitly, NOT the external world.

[B. Roche]

It betrays a certain prevention, even a sort of illiteracy to decry a part of the gnostic mythos for being unconvincing. One may as well criticize the poor paint quality on the wall of Plato's cave. This is not a substantive basis for argument, but certainly it is an ersatz-erudite way to commence bloviation. Some will naturally be taken in.

As for "mental faculties" vis-a-vis gnosis, this sounds like a child's fantasy. What on earth are we talking about? Have your, Sir, attained gnosis? Or is this your surmise, based on reading, misreading?

Pure pretense.

[Michael Prescott]

The reference to "mental faculties" is explained in the post that immediately precedes this one. It’s taken from Stevan Davies' book on the Apocryphon of John. Of course it’s only one possible interpretation.

I definitely have not attained gnosis, Sir! 😁