When Truth Falls, Ego Rises

A piece of business here– I have taken down the contact me form on the Gnostic Insights website because all I ever get from it is junk emails that jam up my box. So if you want to contact me, probably the best way to do it is to go to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack and then leave a comment underneath the latest podcast episode. Then I will definitely see what you are writing to me. Or you could contact me through LinkedIn, but I don’t want you to contact me if you’re trying to sell me something, some sort of service, because honestly, I get dozens of those a day and it’s just too much. It’s just really too much. And the chances of me saying, yeah , are practically nil. Okay. So that’s why there’s no longer a contact me form there at Gnostic Insights. The children’s book is published and out on amazon.com. It’s already sold three copies. Hopefully that’s just the beginning. And on another matter, I’m going to run another free booksy promotion for A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel on Amazon. And you can get the ebook of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel for free from August 23rd through the 26th. That way, even if I had sent you a free copy for reviews or anything like that, or if you have been given a copy of the book as a gift, you can still qualify to leave a review on Amazon for the book because it will be a verified purchase, even though you didn’t have to pay anything for it. We really need to boost those reviews, folks. So please do me a favor. Write a review or at least throw some stars my direction for the book. Okay? What we’re going to look at today is basically Chapter Five from A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. And that chapter is called The Fall of Logos and the Rise of the Deficiency. I’m going to focus on the deficiency and what that means—why it’s called the deficiency . I’m just going to skim through Chapter Five. We know that in this form of Gnosticism that I teach that comes directly out of the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, the Aeon we discuss is not Sophia, but rather Logos. And this is one of the big things that sets the Tripartite Tractate apart from the other books in the Nag Hammadi. The Tripartite Tractate talks about Logos. And I prefer this. Let me tell you why. The story with Sophia and her Fall and then her illegitimate child, Yaldabaoth, and all of the things that happened to them down on the Earth—that’s a mythological type of story. On the other hand, the story of Logos, the Aeon Logos and its Fall, it’s not mythological in the same way. It’s logical . It has to do with the way that consciousness rolls out from the Source. It has to come from the original Source and then keep coming down to us as we sit here talking and listening. The Tripartite Tractate follows that course of consciousness from the Source, which is called the Father in the Tripartite Tractate, and then through the first emanation of the Father, which is called the Son in the Tripartite Tractate. And then how does it get from the Son to all of us down here? There is a mechanism for that. And that’s the mechanism we’re going to talk some about today. You see, Logos was the final Aeon produced by the combination of all of the Aeons of the Fullness of God together, giving praise and glory to the Father and Son. And in their combined Fullness, all of them focused on a single topic, that being giving praise to the Father and Son, they gave birth to the final Aeon. And that birth is that Logos, the final Aeon produced by the Fullness of God through their combination, contains within itself a complete pleroma that’s one level down, one fractal level down from the actual Fullness of God. Logos is a true image or representation of the Fullness of God, simply one fractal level down. So Logos looks just like the Fullness. His pleroma looks exactly like the Fullness. Everybody’s in there. And Logos then mistook himself for the Fullness because he was complete, and he knew all of the plans, and he could dream of Paradise like nobody’s business, all by himself. Logos mistakes himself for the Fullness. And so Logos decided to launch himself into the realm of glory to reunite with the Father. But, without the willing support of the Fullness, Logos wasn’t able to give proper glory to the Father, and therefore he stumbled and fell. The Tripartite Tractate puts it this way: The Logos himself caused it to happen, being complete and unitary, for the glory of the Father, whom he desired, and (he did so) being content with it, but those whom he wished to take hold of firmly he begot in shadows [and] copies and likenesses. For, he was not able to bear the sight of the light, but he looked into the depth and he doubted. (Attridge and Mueller, verse 77) … which is just another way to say that Logos took upon himself a great project, and then he f