u/TranquilTrader

From the Gospel of Truth:
For now, their works lie scattered. In time, Unity will complete the realms. Within Unity each one will receive themselves, and within knowledge they’ll purify themselves from multiplicity into Unity, consuming matter within themselves like fire, and darkness by light, death by life. If indeed these things have happened to each one of us, then it’s right for us to think about all, so that this house will be holy and silent for the Unity.

If you look at his qualities:

• he could not lie
• he could not act from ill intent
• he is a righteous judge (it's a balancing act)

You can see that these are the qualities required for ascension. There's one more thing though: it is the burden of the heart commonly known as guilt. Due to these qualities and because his heart was light like a feather he was able to ascend. He didn't carry any kind of heavy guilt in his heart that would hold him down from ascension. And he effortlessly forgave any/all transgressions against him.

So how could others ascend? It is to reach the same qualities and same lightness of heart by redeeming oneself. One unburdens one's own heart of guilt by confessing the Truth and making past wrongdoings right. If e.g. you've stolen someone's money, you can redeem this by confessing and returning what was stolen. If after receiving the confession of Truth they are not able to forgive it remains their burden and not yours. They will carry the burden of unforgiveness in their heart which will only prevent their own ascension.

So the key is: unburden your heart by confessing the Truth of all guilt and making it right. Naturally these works of redemption would cause much 'tribulation'. Upon completion of Unity no works lie scattered as they have all been made right. This means each and everyone has finally completed their own works.

Interaction with others is only possible because of the limitations the concept of interaction brings. In this physical existence we can hug our loved ones because of the limitation that we can not occupy the same space at the same time. Degrees of freedom are not possible without also introducing certain limitations for those freedoms at the same time.

If you expect to somehow become immaterial, a good analogy of that is a 'ghost'. In the common description of 'ghost' they can not be felt or touched in any way. Effectively if one desires the ability of hug a loved one, similar limitations as we observe in the physical must be introduced to that existence even in Pleroma.

Occasionally in these discussions the connection between the spirit and the physical comes up, and people might have different kind of explanations for the connection and how it might work.

Personally I model this connection by explaining 'spirit' as an energetic propagation phenomenon that also interacts with one's mind in the physical. My approach is to keep this study / exploration as rational and logical as possible, trying to avoid any kind of ambiguity that might lead to confusion around the subject. So effectively keeping it clearly and explicitly defined.

The gist of my own attempt to explain is that 'spirit' is the carrier of feelings and the individual's 'soul' is the part of the mind that handles discernment and choices. So effectively the 'soul' is in charge of discerning the feelings propagated by the 'spirit'. We are in full control of our discernment and choices, but not in control of our feelings. I would postulate that it might be possible to measure brainwave patterns and identify those that are related to feelings (spirit) and choices/discernment (soul), and form models/patterns of their operation. Of course there might be some dimensions to 'spirit' and 'soul' that we cannot measure, but I tend to think that some of the connection is measurable.

In relation to the Gnostic concepts, perhaps the archons could be said to be carriers of bad feelings or detrimental influence on one's discernment and on the flip side the aeons could be described as propagators good feelings and positive influence on discernment. In this context the demiurge is a good representation of extremely poor discernment.

Naturally this is just one approach among many, and I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has been contemplating over this kind of topics and what other ideas you might have come up with to approach various rational explanations to these phenomena.

I'd like to keep this constructive, so this is not a debate : )

If during the next five years humanity was able to come together, form a utopia and live in harmony, would you still consider you'd be living in a prison? Assume also that medical care would have conquered all illnesses.

Edit:
Physical existence allows us to interact with each other. Would you prefer we couldn't interact with anything?

Many fall into the trap of desiring to be among them and thus their interpretation becomes such that would allow it. The nature of the 144000 holy ones is actually very clearly expressed in scripture:

Revelation 14:5: and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.

These people always confess Christ (=Truth), they simply can not lie because they trust in the power of Truth. They have fully transfigured into the likeness of Christ. They are passionate about Truth (so not lukewarm), and they serve Truth as their only master.

So why are they sealed? It's because of the law; one must reap what one sows. As their word they have sown only Truth, therefore they shall not reap confusion. As their deeds they have only sown with good intention out of love, therefore they shall not reap harm. Through the narrow gate they have entered the kingdom that is within.

If you have fallen from Truth and find yourself not counted among these, there is still a path but it requires doing the works that were previously omitted.

Presumably this one is again one of those that the different Gnostic sects might disagree on.

Perfect justice here would be e.g. some form of infinite and universal law where each evil action of a person / soul would always cause an equal and opposite re-action towards themself. This re-action (punishment) might occur in the same reincarnation or some future reincarnation of the soul. Naturally there would need to be rewards for good actions as well.

Do you think the Monad is capable and also would be willing to enforce such a universal law of justice for all?

We observe causality to be omnipotent, it just occurs as the fundamental driving 'force' of the cosmos.

Who would you say owns the whole thing? Or would you say it is 'out of control' ?

It seems that different schools of Gnostic thought might disagree on this. I was going to start a poll on this topic just to get a sense of how people generally feel about it, but the poll option doesn't appear to be available on this sub. I thought I had seen polls posted here before..

Maybe this can work if people just comment yes or no. Add any further thoughts if you feel like it. I'm not going to start any discussion on anyone's specific view, but if you do want to discuss feel free to tag me in a comment as an indication.

I've kept touching this topic in multiple discussion under other topics and I felt this needs a topic of its own...

Propaganda is the tool the so called rulers use to try to sway the masses (i.e. the sheep). The common believer is easily swayed as they daily turn on their television just to listen to the latest 'information' that they are supposed to inhale and blindly believe. The expectation is that the masses will act on this 'information' and thus would be caused to move in unison and in a controlled fashion. There are no doubt trained psychologist analysing what should be informed to the public and how to get the desired effect of control.

Because the authoritative control can only work if people blindly believe and then act on that belief, gnosis when widely used as a basis of personal daily operation would entirely stop propaganda from working at all. When people stop being blind believers and start verifying (by observation) claims before they act on them, they free themselves from the effects and control of propaganda. After this they can no longer be moved by false claims. When enough people collectively and consciously start operating this way the propaganda of the rulers becomes just nonsensical words declared by the desperate leaders that are about to lose all of their power. This when manifested will be the death blow to the system of dictatorial rule we see all around and in all organisations.

Gnosis is not solely about one's spiritual journey, gnosis is the entirety of the knowledge and understanding of Truth including both the spiritual and the physical, as the latter is merely the manifestation of the former. Naturally for any personal journey what matters most is the individual spiritual growth in gnosis. However, for our collective consciousness which relies on our interactions, how we actually interact with each other plays a crucial role - and this is the very thing that literally manifests the physical world we observe before our eyes.

I hope this stream of thoughts may bring some blessing to Your day today : )

I hope you all are still hungry for more food for thought. I'd like to push back on what seems to be a widely spread notion of an evil creator of the OT.

The common theme that can be observed in modern debates (i.e. the battles of the WORD) is that people extremely often resort to ad hominem attacks, which essentially is to entirely dismiss the message being conveyed (no ear to hear) and instead try to 'kill' the messenger. Notice here how 'killing' is not a literal term, consider that this also could apply across all the ancient writings wrt to 'ordered killing'.

Description of 'who' came before - as terminology, in descending order:

Yahushua / Christ:

Means absolute Truth (undiluted as message, nothing added - if you of your own accord add anything to Truth you've created a deception and thus have fallen). About to be 'married' to the Bride of Christ (according to the ancient writings, the most holy congregation of 144000 - will grow very quickly in the 'holy war'). The primary messenger would be the head of the congregation.

Abram:

The messenger that was ready to sacrifice their own understanding (=the son Isaac, which was the message) because there was an appearance that the message might contain falsehoods. The humble will be able to accept their own mistakes, in this case potentially being wrong. Turned out they were not wrong.

Adam:

The first primitive understanding of 'Existence', Eve can be seen as the 'bride congregation' of the messenger of Adam.

This perspective makes Adam, Abram and Yahushua mainly about the 'messages' of different levels of understanding and gnosis. When there's a message there's always also a messenger to bring the message. Some have asked whether the messenger commonly known by the modern name Jesus was gnostic, to me it seems that given the premise he knew/knows the Father he is by definition a gnostic.

Additionally, if Truth is allegorically referred to as 'the rock' then 'stoning to death' becomes: the community bringing others back to the fold (potentially even using an argument from majority fallacy, but producing the correct outcome).

Cities being destroyed by fire can be seen as the primitive understanding of people being falsified by the Truth that was brought into general awareness by the messengers (or 'angels'), falsifying the life's work of many.

If we inspect the historical writings with the above premises, the author clearly has always been our loving Father (Monad). So we would be the instruments of Creation of all understanding. The stubborn and prideful only desire to take credit of new ideas and boastfully lift themselves high to be glorified by their peers. On the other hand the meek and the humble feel and understand through gnosis how all ideas flow from the Father. No one can choose their own thoughts, they simply just occur - all we can do is choose how we try to focus our minds.

From all of this it should be screaming at you that absolute Truth (the basis of gnosis) is your saviour in every possible conceivable way. If you love Truth, you will run towards Truth and leave behind all the deception of this world.

To me water allegorically represents spirit / feeling(s). In this context walking on stormy waters therefore becomes: being able to calmly walk through any thought processes regardless of any turbulent emotions. Essentially, it relates to discernment - and not letting emotions diminish the power of it.

Given this subset of a 'mental framework', and looking at the conceptual science fiction stories of Dune, it seems somewhat apparent to me that the Fremen could be likened to gnostics, and their body of knowledge / understanding in this regard would be represented by their planet Arrakis. This is from the perspective of gnostics as thinkers being extremely rational and not very emotional. The other extreme as a reference could be the pentecostals, they almost seem like they're mostly drunk from spirit / emotions (many could be faking it) and don't really deeply seek to understand (at least in most cases, this shouldn't be a generalisation). Rationality and logic can never be faked, and to me this is a great strength of true gnostics.

Does this resonate?

Interestingly I experienced my first ever 'lucid dream' very early this morning. I've never really cared about them, I've stumbled on some people claiming to be able to have them - and now I found myself in one. Being very curious by nature now I am forced to investigate : )

The dream itself was a bit of a circus of various things, in the very beginning I quickly became aware I was in a dream and was able to make choices exactly as if being awake. I ran into one of my very closest friends in the dream and had a discussion with him. Later today I sent him a message about seeing in him in a dream, and there was a minor match with his outfit to what he had purchased few months earlier (which I didn't know about), but the key point I was interested to find out if he had been in a similar dream at the same time as well. Appears the answer is no, or at the very least he does not remember.

Annoyingly the dream was cut quite short because there was a female 'witch' type character (dressed in very dark clothes, entire face filled with extremely white makeup and she had no eyes - just empty sockets) that was trying to approach me saying something and I was brushing her off very angrily. So in this reality I woke myself up with my own mumbling. Was extremely disappointed that I woke up and wasn't able to investigate more...

Now that I wrote this down, I'm keen to allegorically assign lack of understanding to the missing eyes, and wickedness to the way she was clothed. (edit-1: perhaps the extreme white makeup could be interpreted as trying to appear pure while actually being far from it)

I'm trying to figure out what kind of gnosis I am able draw out of this now, and perhaps in the future if I have more such dreams. I am extremely pragmatic by nature, so are there any protocols from the gnostic perspective?