3: Gnostic Psychology
As for ourselves, let each one of us dig down after the root of evil which is within one, and let one pluck it out of one's heart from the root. It will be plucked out if we recognize it. But if we are ignorant of it, it takes root in us and produces its fruit in our heart. It masters us. We are its slaves. It takes us captive, to make us do what we do not want; and what we do want, we do not do. It is powerful because we have not recognized it. While it exists it is active. Ignorance is the mother of all evil. Ignorance will result in death, because those who come from ignorance neither were, nor are, nor shall be.
– Gospel of Philip
To say the unexamined life is not worth living, as Socrates did, puts one in alignment with basic gnostic values.
The examination begins with deep introspection, sparking the development of a profound inner life.
The inner life grows, little by little, until the endpoint of complete enlightenment.
To some, it seems that the ‘self’ is a simple, ordinary, and boring concept. Really, nothing is further from the truth.
The more we look, the more mysteries we find.
We need to become introspective. We must open our senses to what is going on in our self.
The self is a composite of many different processes and qualities.
Some scoff at the idea of introspection and say it is unreliable. Honestly, the one who knows the correct procedures develops the most reliable mind possible.
To be aware of what is going on within you, is to develop an inner sense. In the beginning, working with the inner sense is difficult.
Daily meditation is the critical activity to sharpen your inner sense.
For this work, you must be curious about your inner state. There is a naïve tendency to say, “that is just the way I am,” to see that everything you think and feel is just an action of your real self.
How can you say anything about yourself if you have never examined it?
Let us not be complete fools and listen to the wisdom of ancient philosophies to guide our work. We need a map to traverse the long, difficult path across the dark sea, to arrive at the shore of salvation.
We all have our root, our inner divinity, which is our Being.
The totality of our Being could never be accurately diagrammed or symbolized, because it transcends all concept, number, and reasoning. Yet, there are different systems we can use to try to understand.
These conceptual maps can be understood any various ways according to different times, cultures, and needs.
In terms of the topic of this book, we can make a general reduction of our inner constitution in the following way:
The Uncreated Absolute
Universal Consciousness; the Three Primary Forces of Creation
Unique Consciousness; “That Which Already Is”
Knowledge of Experience; “That Which Must Be Developed”
The Body or Form
False Creations; Results of Actions Done While Lacking the Knowledge of Experience
Using common western language, we can use these terms:
Beyond God
God, the Trinity (the Universal Divinity)
Spirit, Inner Divinity, or Inner God
Soul
Body
Mistakes, Sins, Defects, Satan, the Devil
Any system of psychology or spirituality that does not consider all these factors is ultimately deficient.
The psychological work is developing “that which must be developed,” which is only possible by making use of the traits of the first five aspects. The sixth must be eliminated entirely.
Roughly speaking, Buddhism defines them as follows:
Adi-Buddha, Emptiness
The Trikaya
Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha), the Clear Light
Bodhichitta
Five Skandhas
Ignorance
Not all forms of Buddhism speak about all five aspects, and there are many different terms which can be substituted.
Likewise, rich spiritual culture of India has many different systems that relate to these five principles. One way of demarcating them:
Sat or Parabrahman
The Trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva)
Atman, or Purshua
Buddhi, or Vijnana, within the koshas or sariras
Rupa
Kleshas
Hebraic Kabbalah, in terms of the Tree of Life:
Ain, Ain Soph
Ain Soph Aur as Kether, Chokmah, Binah
Chesed and Geburah
Geburah, Tiphereth, Netzach, Hod, Yesod
Malkuth
Klipoth
The Gnostic text, The Pistis Sophia:
The Region of Barbelo
The Three Amens from the Region of Barbelo
The First Mystery
Sophia (after triumphing over Yaldabaoth)
The Mixture
Yaldabaoth, the Counterfeiting Spirit
Certainly, we also find these six aspects within the Hellenic mysteries of Greece and Rome, in sunny Egypt, in the Nordic lands, and well as the American Mayan and Aztec teachings.
We are not improvising opportunistic doctrines, nor are we looking to align ourselves with a certain narrow spiritual latitude. The gnostic mysteries, by whatever name, are found in all authentic traditions, by those who know how to see them.
Concerning gnostic psychology, that which must be developed is our soul, our psyche, our psychology. This is the ‘work’ we must do.
Our psychology is quite complex. How did it get this way?
God did not make you this way. You must take responsibility for who you are. Nothing about your psychology is random.
You are responsible for all your actions, and everything that is in your mind.
Everything you experience today, are results from activities of an ancient or contemporary past.
We must dismantle the sophisms of materialism to progress in these studies.
The materialistic idea that ‘you’ can be reduced to long sequences of nucleic acids (DNA) is completely unevidenced.
DNA is merely a code for reproducing proteins. Your psychology is not reducible to proteins. Proteins are the building block of your body, but you are not exclusively your body.
Chromosomes are important, as are education and other environmental factors. Yet even these factors together still do not account for all your psychological characteristics.
We cannot ignore epigenetic factors either, which modulate protein expression. Nevertheless, this will also not account for your psychology.
Your body is like an antenna for signals. The quality of the antenna matters quite a lot, but it is not the same thing as the signal itself.
A television that is damaged does not display anything, but in such a case, there is no evidence that the ultimate source of the image was the television itself.
The idea that the television creates the data for the images it displays is unevidenced. Likewise, the idea that the soul is just a function of the brain is unevidenced.
Skeptical rationalists assume that rationality is the highest component of being human, and that such a function is produced exclusively through the brain. This is just conjecture in both accounts.
Some, like Penrose, believe that consciousness is not mathematically computational, and therefore, could never be represented by a computer, no matter how advanced. Minsky represents the majority however, in believing that we are nothing more than a machine.
It is true that most aspects of our everyday self are just like a computer. Many facets of our daily life are completely mechanical and algorithmic. However, at our core, our Being, we are not reducible to a computation.
The brain, the whole nervous system, is a signal transponder. Obviously, when the brain is healthy, the signal is better. When the brain is diseased, the signal is modified or lost.
Materialists will say something about there being no evidence for signals being transmitted or received by the brain. For them, there is no other possibility for consciousness other than complex configurations of matter. They believe there is no evidence for there being any other type of evidence outside of materialism.
Modern intellectuals often pity fundamentalists who absurdly assert an anthropomorphic Jehovah created the world in seven literal days. Yet they have no problem believing that consciousness emerges from lifeless atoms, molecules, and cells of the brain, without the slightest form of empirical evidence. They point to all life as their evidence, yet this is putting the cart before the horse.
There is no mathematical analysis of consciousness. No one has created consciousness through an algorithm. No one has ever generated consciousness through combinations of matter. Therefore, consciousness as being computational is just a theory that remains unevidenced.
Modern artificial intelligence is nothing more than millions of iterations of conditionings and trainings, which have nothing to do with consciousness or intelligence, but rather a complex algorithm of learning.
Consciousness itself does not depend on the processes of reasoning (which is developed through training or learning). Consciousness is far beyond the extremely limited orbit of the intellect.
Our intellect has been nourished with three-dimensional data of the sensory impressions. We have a three-dimensional based psychology.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant wisely stated that it is the quality of mind which gives shape to the space of our experience.
A superior psyche therefore organizes space in superior ways through pure intuition. We need to expand our spatial sense, which is done by awakening consciousness.
Hyperspaces are mathematically coherent. So, what then prevents them from existing? Absolutely nothing in principle. What we need is a new mode of measurement.
We need hyperspace instrumentation – our awakened consciousness.
A microscope will find no evidence of any stars. A telescope will find no evidence of microbes. We need the right instrument, and we need to know how to use it.
Your Being is atemporal, immeasurable, limitless, and manifests outside the three-dimensional sensory input of empiricism and rationality.
Rationality is needed, yes, but it is just one component of the soul. The modern person has been reduced to a three-dimensional psychology, and the result is horrifying.
Indeed, the soul, psyche, Buddha-nature, or whatever you want to call it, is something that has been changing through many lives.
According to The Pistis Sophia, every soul returns many times into new bodies. Each time, the soul is given reward or punishment for good and bad deeds. Then the soul is given a cup of forgetfulness prior to returning to a new body:
[The Rulers of Fate] give the old soul a cup of forgetfulness out of the seed of wickedness, filled with all the different desires and all forgetfulness. And straightway, when that soul shall drink out of the cup, it forgetteth all the regions to which it hath gone [after the death of the body], and all the chastisements in which it hath travelled. And that cup of the water of forgetfulness becometh [a] body outside the soul, and it resembleth the soul in all [its] figures and maketh [itself] like it, which is what is called the counterfeiting spirit.
– Pistis Sophia, Chapter 131
The Pistis Sophia must be understood in a symbolic way.
The soul has a counterfeiting spirit around it, which arrived from the “seed of wickedness, filled with desires and forgetfulness.”
The counterfeiting spirit is the ego. The chastisements are due to the wrong actions the soul has done.
The ego is a counterfeit spirit. We naively, ignorantly, believe our true self, our spirit, is the ego. Due to this misapprehension of the ego for being the spirit, everything goes badly.
There are three triple powers mentioned in The Pistis Sophia:
The first triple-power
The second triple-power
The third triple-power
The ego is also called the self-willed, which is the third of three triple-powers.
The first triple-power is always a triple-light-power, called the Three Amens, denoted as simply the Logos or the Trinity in Christianity. This is the Universal Cosmic Christ.
The Universal Cosmic Christ is not a person, but it can be incarnated within a person that has walked the path, like Jesus. The Universal Cosmic Christ manifests as the primordial forces and factors which make space, cause and effect, and experience an actuality.
The second triple-power is always a triple-light-power, which is related to your Innermost Spirit, That Which Already Is.
The first triple-power (Christ) is like all the light in the universe. The second triple-power (Spirit) is like all the light of a particular star in the universe.
The first triple-power (Christ) is universal divinity. The second triple-power is a particle of divinity, which is your Innermost Spirit.
A fraction of Innermost Spirit descends into matter. This is the seed of human consciousness, the soul, which in its pure form always acts in accord with the divine will of Spirit.
The third triple-power is created for the possibility of free will, and therefore, the possibility of the development of wisdom. Sophia is wisdom.
Due to the ability of accumulating the results of good and evil, the soul is referred to as That Which Must Be Acquired. We say it in this way, because the acquired soul, properly speaking, is perfect knowledge of reality. Mahayana Buddhism calls it prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom), and also bodhichitta, and realization of shunyata.
We have not yet acquired our soul. You must acquire it, your soul. You must possess your soul.
Wisdom is only possible to acquire if there is a possibility of freewill to perform good or evil. This quality is present in the third triple-power.
You are free to do as you will. There is no other way to acquire wisdom without you doing your will. Just know that all actions have results, and therefore your actions lead to joy or pain.
Your psychology is a triple power of instinct, emotion, and reason: sex, heart, and mind.
The third triple-power only becomes a triple-light-power when sex, heart, and reason have become completely enlightened.
Until then, the triple power is possessed by a counterfeit light, which we call the ego.
The counterfeit light (the ego) takes its light-power from the true source of light (the Spirit) and distorts it. Therefore, the ego has the power to act only because it has enslaved the soul. The ego does not permit divine will to be done, but only allows egotistical self-will to be done.
When we pray, “Thy will be done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven…”, we are asking for help, from our Spirit and Cosmic Christ, to fight the will (power) of ignorance (ego), here on Earth. Earth is your physical body.
The ego traps the soul. Yaldabaoth, which is the third triple power, enslaves Sophia.
The word sophia means wisdom, but Sophia is only her namesake when she truly reclaims the power which has been usurped by Yaldabaoth.
Sophia at first is unable to discern the false light for the true light, and this is how she mistakenly creates Yaldabaoth. Yaldabaoth then enslaves her. We are enslaved by our own false creation, the ego.
This is the same process outlined in Dzogchen, the highest path of Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. When the five primordial ‘lights’ are not seen for what they are – expressions of one’s own primordial consciousness – but instead are misapprehended as something other than self-nature, this ontological delusion immediately snares one in suffering.
Yaldabaoth, the ego, is one-half darkness and one-half fire.
Your spiritual potential remains in darkness, and what is there to be seen, is a burning passionate fire that consumes your life in endless cycles of suffering.
Yaldabaoth, the self-willed ego, has 49 demons. This represents 49 layers of your subconsciousness, unconsciousness, and infraconsciousness that must be liberated from suffering.
Subconsciousness can be accessed at times through simple introspection, although meditation is usually required. Unconsciousness is only uncovered through meditation. Accessing infraconsciousness requires profound meditation.
The self-willed counterfeit spirits are called the appendages by the Egyptian Gnostic Basilides. They are so called, because they append to the soul, and carry the soul to do things which make it suffer.
Sex, heart, and mind makes you a triple power. You are the lowest manifestation of the trinity! You must rectify the trinity within yourself by removing the ego and awakening to the light.
Sex in the highest is the Third Amen, The Holy Spirit, Nirmanakaya.
Heart in the highest is the Second Amen, The Son, Sambhogakaya.
Mind in the highest in the First Amen, The Father, Dharmakaya.
Sex in perfection is the living harmony of all the rhythms of creation. Heart in perfection is the beatitude, the glory of Christ. Mind in the perfection is the abstract Being, beyond cause.
You have freedom, but most of it has already been taken away from you, by your own miscreation, the ego. You created your own ego. Your own actions and ignorance are the primal root of your suffering.
You are like a trojan horse. From the outside, you are a single thing, but within, you possess many belligerent warriors that spill the blood of the Sophia within you.
If you do not kill those warriors, they will rape and pillage your entire soul. Sophia suffers the worst under Yaldabaoth.
Do not blame the ego as some other thing – you are mixed with the ego. Take responsibility for your own deeds. This is why, in The Pistis Sophia, the body, soul, and ego together are called The Mixture.
Part of you is pure. Your true Inner Spirit is always your guiding light, your North Star. You are a part of that, in truth. But you are mixed with a counterfeit light, which is your own ego.
When you realize this, you realize your own nakedness and misery; the instinct wants to hide from the Inner Spirit. People hide in work, in vacations, in bars and brothels, in theories, philosophy, and religion.
To see your own psychology is difficult because it is ugly.
It takes a lot of self-reflection and serene observation to see what is going on inside.
You must begin to contemplate where the source from which all your volitions, emotions, and thoughts emerge.
Sit quietly for ten minutes and see what comes out of your mind. This is enough to demonstrate that what we think, feel, and do are all happening without any prior endorsement.
People often believe that if they are thinking something, then they are those thoughts.
People often believe that if they are feeling something, then they are the same emotions.
Any short analysis proves otherwise. If you are the thoughts you think, then where do you go when different thoughts emerge? And if you are the one thinking them, they why do thoughts appear even when you do not want them?
We are a chaos of continual contradiction.
This is something particularly important. Almost all thoughts we have are a mechanical reaction of sensory impressions and come from unconscious volitions.
If you see someone dressed in expensive clothes, driving a nice car, or living in a beautiful home, you may be jealous. You may be enticed. You may be repulsed. Why? Why assume that any of these reactions are truly from your Innermost Spirit?
Jealously has many aspects which must be introspectively, retrospectively, analyzed in depth. Not just intellectually, but in absolute serenity of mind and heart.
Jealously, or any other ego, is a reactive process, it is the result of an algorithm based upon attachments and ignorance.
People think that their sexual arousal is their core self. Everyone is identified with their lust. They think that their lust is their true self-expression.
To blindly follow one’s instincts, because blood has started to flow within the vessels of the genitalia, is lunacy.
Truly, lust very is difficult to comprehend. Too many religious types have attempted to cut off lust without comprehension. The result is further sexual perversion. Yet, more modern types, perhaps reacting to this, swing the other way and work to fully develop their lust. This also leads to sexual perversions.
Comprehension is difficult, but it is worthwhile.
The root of Yaldabaoth is sexual. This is why he is described as raping Sophia. Our wrong actions cause God to suffer because God is connected to our suffering.
Yaldabaoth means Father of the Children of the Void. This has a dual meaning.
In terms of the ego, these ‘children’ are all the many desires we have, which are within the dark void of our psychology.
In the superior sense, The Children of the Void relates to the abstract principles of your infinite potential.
You must become a child of Sophia. You must become the child of your own infinite potential. You must become a child of your own gnostic psychological work.
This work is not about hating your ego. Hatred is just another reaction. This work is not merely about embracing who you ‘truly’ are either.
How can you embrace what you do not comprehend? It is best not to project ideas. See what is right in front of you. Begin to observe your psychology.
Those who lie sin against The First Amen, the Father.
Those who hate sin against The Second Amen, the Son.
Those who fornicate sin against the Third Amen, the Holy Spirit.
