By Cyd Ropp, Ph. D.

Copyright 2022; All rights reserved

In 2019, I wrote a book called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated where I translated the Tripartite Tractate into modern English in a very, very simple way, with illustrations to facilitate understanding. As I say, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated is very simply written, with none of the original quotes and arcane language contained in the ancient Tripartite Tractate. The purpose of the Gnostic Insights podcasts is to explore with you the gnosis that I continue to glean from my readings of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts.

What we are now doing here at Gnostic Insights is further polishing and condensing these podcast episodes into a single manuscript that I plan to call The Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. That title may seem oxymoronic, which means self-contradictory, because if you have listened for any time to Gnostic Insights you may be thinking that this gnosis is anything but simple. However, my goal here is to demystify the Gnostic Gospel by presenting it in a logical and straight-forward way so that any person who wants to understand it, can.

This gnosis is not an arbitrary fable. The Tripartite Tractate is more along the lines of a philosophy of science type of book rather than a book of myths. It proposes a certain starting hypothesis—that there is an original consciousness we call the Father—and it proceeds logically from that starting proposition through all the steps necessary to reach our observable universe. It is an inherently cogent argument that begins with the Father and winds up with us as living creatures in relationship with that consciousness. It “makes sense.” That is why understanding is more important here than memorization.

I believe that we all have this gnosis written within our Self that comes directly from the Father, the Son, and the Fullness of God, so awakening to this gnosis is more a matter of remembering rather than learning. Your willingness to listen with an open heart and mind is all that is required to achieve this remembrance because it is the will of the Father and the Fullness that you remember them. There is no other hidden knowledge to search out or genealogies to memorize, lodges to join, or secret rituals that must be performed; you only need to remember the gnosis that is inherent within you. It is my hope that, as you listen to this information and meditate upon it, you will come to understand the origins of our universe and our place in it. The gnostic faith is not blind faith but reasonable faith, and we were created as reasonable beings.

So far, we’ve talked about the Father, the Son, the ALL, and the Hierarchy of the Fullness. In Chapter 4—The Generation of the Aeons—we heard how the Aeons mingled with each other in the Fullness as they gave glory to the Father, and that this intermingling produced an infinite variety of Aeons within the Pleroma of the Fullness. Then in Chapter 5 we heard about the generation of Logos as the final Aeon produced by this intermingling of the Fullnesses and how the body or Pleroma of Logos contained a fractal copy of all the other Aeons. It was this original Pleroma of Logos that escaped his control as a result of the Fall.

The aeons name themselves and sort themselves into a hierarchy. Logos was the final Aeon produced by the intermingling of all the Aeons of the Fullness. Logos contains fractals of all the other Aeons.

We’ve also covered how the Ego of Logos overreached his position in the Hierarchy and how, instead of ascending to the heights of the Father, Logos fell out of the Fullness and lost the integrity of his Aeonic Pleroma.

If you have not heard the previous few episodes, I invite you to visit the gnosticinsights.com website where you will find all of these episodes posted under the tab called “A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel.” Now, carrying on…

Logos was horrified by the phantoms and shadows that issued forth from his presumptuous thought and regret turned into condemnation of the irrational things he had accidentally produced. At first Logos battled against the irrational imitations, but his anger had no effect on the chaos of the deficiency.

And so Logos turned away from the presumptuous thought that had brought about the Fall and he remembered his place with the Aeons of the Fullness and the Father. The Tripartite Tractate says that all of this remembrance produced within him a new Pleroma. This is a long quote, but the language is so lovely that it seems important for you to hear it. We will spend the remainder of this episode explaining it.

According to the Tripartite Tractate, “When the Logos which was defective was illumined, his Pleroma began. He escaped those who had disturbed him at first. He became unmixed with them. He stripped off that arrogant thought. He received mingling with the Rest, when those who had been disobedient to him at first bent down and humbled themselves before him. And he rejoiced over the visitation of his brothers who had visited him. He gave glory and praise to those who had become manifest as a help to him, while he gave thanks, because he had escaped those who revolted against him, and admired and honored the greatness and those who had appeared to him in a determined way. He generated manifest images of the living visages, pleasing among things which are good, existing among the things which exist, resembling them in beauty, but unequal to them in truth, since they are not from an agreement with him, between the one who brought them forth and the one who revealed himself to him. But in wisdom and knowledge he acts, mingling the Logos with him(self) entirely. Therefore, those which came forth from him are great, just as that which is truly great.”

“After he was amazed at the beauty of the ones who had appeared to him, he professed gratitude for this visitation. The Logos performed this activity, through those from whom he had received aid, for the stability of those who had come into being because of him and so that they might receive something good, since he thought to pray for the organization of all those who came forth from him, which is stabilized, so that it might make them established. Therefore, those whom he intentionally produced are in chariots, just as those who came into being, those who have appeared, so that they might pass through every place of things which are below, so that each one might be given the place which is constituted as he is.”

This word “chariots” is interesting and often talked about. People wonder who and what came in chariots and what their mission was. This verse says that the Second Order Powers that Logos intentionally produced were sent down in chariots “so that they might pass through every place of things which are below, so that each one might be given the place which is constituted as he is.” Chariots means vessels, which people sometimes interpret as space ships, for example, which would mean that the Second Order Power are ETs. That would be an example of a modern mythological interpretation currently making the rounds.

My interpretation of chariots is not mythological, but biological. Every living creature is composed of cells. These cells are contained within their own boundaries called cell walls. I believe the most straight-forward interpretation of the chariots of the Second Order Powers is that the chariots are their own, individual boundaries that contain them and hold the life within: cell walls. Every living organism on the planet begins with a cellular mechanism contained within a vessel wrapped in a cell wall. Cells are small and additive. They fulfill what the verse says: they “pass through every place of things which are below, so that each one might be given the place which is constituted as he is.” In other words, every organism builds itself up through cells that develop into a creature “constituted as he is.”

The Second Order of Powers bring life to the dead universe within the Boundary.

When Logos turned away from the presumptuous thought and began to remember the Fullness and the Father, he generated a new fractal Pleroma within himself that contained all of the images of the beings of thought. Only this time, since Logos was within the Boundary when he remembered the Fullness and the Father, his new Pleroma was fitted into the Boundary. This differed from the original Pleroma of Logos that Fell and deserted him because this Pleroma was able to work within the Boundary with reason and purpose, unlike the imitations of the deficiency who lacked the Father’s consciousness and the ability to pull themselves out of chaos. As the imitations were formed without the Boundary, they lacked awareness of the cooperative unanimity of the Fullness. Here is how the Tripartite Tractate describes it:

“It was not from the sickness which came into being that they were produced… but (from) the one who sought after the pre-existent. Once he had prayed, he both raised himself to the good and sowed in them a pre-disposition to seek and pray to the glorious pre-existent one, and he sowed in them a thought about him and an idea, so that they should think that something greater than themselves exists prior to them, although they did not understand what it was. Begetting harmony and mutual love through that thought, they acted in unity and unanimity, since from unity and from unanimity they have received their very being.”

When Logos remembered, he “raised himself to the good” and found himself back up in the Fullness. The new Pleroma of Logos began to emit a new fruit, an offspring, to displace what had come into being through the Fall. This new fruit consisted of living creatures that resembled the likenesses of the deficiency but were superior to them because they represent the union of the Fullness and are blessed with the Father’s consciousness. Here is how the Tripartite Tractate describes them:

“The powers were good and were greater than those of the likeness. For those belonging to the likeness also belong to a nature of falsehood. From an illusion of similarity and a thought of arrogance has come about that which they became. And they originate from the thought which first knew them.”

The powers of the likeness have the nature of falsehood because they came from an act of Ego that mistook its own will for the will of the Father. The verse above says that the “thought of arrogance” brought them about and, because of their superficial similarity to the Aeons, they continued in the ignorant misappropriation of names that do not belong to them, but belong to “the glories which exist for the honor of the Father”—the Aeons of the Fullness.

The broken-out pieces of Logos were no longer able to relate to each other the way they could when the original Pleroma of Logos was arranged in a hierarchical structure. When Logos overreached and fell, these shadows of the fractals that constituted his being left him and went out on their own. Because the Ego of Logos had been reaching for the heights when he fell, the parts of Logos that broke out from him continued to reach for the heights, only now they were driven by self-centered ambition. And, because they were not situated in a coherent structure, they lacked the ability to cooperate with each other.

The newly produced offspring of the Logos were patterned after the original Aeons of the Fullness; they are fractals of Aeons and fractal iterations of Logos. The First Order of Powers were the original Aeons of the Fullness. The Second Order of Powers is the fruit of Logos when he remembered his brothers in the Fullness and the Father. Because Logos was within the Boundary as he remembered, his new Pleroma was adapted to the shape of the Boundary. This alteration of the Second Order of Powers to come out of Logos enabled them to work cooperatively with each other to develop an ecology similar to the economy of the Fullness but fitted into the Boundary. As explained in the previous chapter, if the cosmos were an infinitely unbounded space, cooperative structures could not be formed because a Boundary is needed to push things together and hold them in relationship.

The Tripartite Tractate describes the Second Order Powers this way: “It was not from the sickness which came into being that they were produced…  Once he had prayed, he both raised himself to the good and sowed in them a pre-disposition to seek and pray to the glorious pre-existent one, and he sowed in them a thought about him and an idea, so that they should think that something greater than themselves exists prior to them, although they did not understand what it was. Begetting harmony and mutual love through that thought, they acted in unity and unanimity, since from unity and from unanimity they have received their very being.”

This verse says that these new Powers were given the ability and desire to wonder about their being and origins. They were also given the ability to think logically and to reason. And, just as importantly, they were given the harmony and mutual love needed to implement the Simple Golden Rule of selfless cooperation.

I mention the Simple Golden Rule in most episodes. In case this is the first time you are hearing the Gnostic Insights podcast, the Simple Golden Rule is part of my Simple Explanation theory of everything that you can find over on my Simple Explanation blog. A dozen years ago I suggested that the way our material cosmos is constructed is through the cooperation of units of consciousness to build something greater for the benefit of all.  Here’s what it says: units of consciousness reach out to others like themselves to hold hands and focus on a project in the middle, sharing information, assistance, and love for the betterment of all. This results in a leveling up of the higher the fewer. For example, skin cells hold hands and share information, assistance, and love to make the skin organ. So while there are millions of skin cells, there is only one skin organ. Hence, the higher, the fewer. All objects in our universe build up from the small and numerous to the larger and fewer. In the case of Second Order Powers, they are units of the consciousness of Logos, fitted into the Boundary so that they could bring life to the deficiency. We will cover this phenomenon in depth in the next episode when we contrast the way Logos and the Demiurge go about bringing order to the universe.

And here I would like to drop in this reminder that we humans and every living creatures on the planet, from bacteria on through the plants, insects, birds, fishes, and all animals including us, we are these Second Order Powers, fitted into the Boundary. And therefore, because “as above, so below,” everything that I am saying about the Second Order Powers applies to us. We were also given the ability to think logically and to reason. And we were given the harmony and mutual love to implement the Simple Golden Rule of selfless cooperation. And this is also why we wonder about our being and our origins.

The Second Order of Powers is also known as “the emissions of the remembrance.” Emissions is another word for emanations, and it refers to the origin of our consciousness. The Second Order of Powers was named the emissions of the remembrance because they were emissions of Logos, so they channeled the consciousness of the Father. The Second Order Powers embody the originating consciousness of the Father, passed down through the Son and the Fullness of God and on into Logos as he remembered his place and origin. They are also called emissions of remembrance because the Self imbedded in every Second Order Power remembers that they come from the Father.

As verse 84 of the Tripartite Tractate puts it, “… he sowed in them a thought about him and an idea, so that they should think that something greater than themselves exists prior to them, although they did not understand what it was. Begetting harmony and mutual love through that thought, they acted in unity and unanimity, since from unity and from unanimity they have received their very being.”

In our next episode, we will look at how these Second Order Powers were manifested in the cosmos as living creatures, representations of the Aeons within the Boundary.

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