Understanding Gnosis

What is gnosis?

There’s a lot of “Gnosticism” floating around on the Internet these days, isn’t there? And the gnosis I’m sharing with you is quite different from most of what’s out there. Before 1945 and 1947—before the Nag Hammadi and Qumran scriptures were dug out of deserts and caves—the only Gnosticism anyone knew was what had survived the Great Purge by the early Catholic Church and the Nicene Council. The Church intentionally stripped the Gnostic material out of what became our New Testament. Why?

I think it’s because actual gnosis puts people in direct contact with the Christ personally, with the Son and the Fullness personally, and with the Father on a personal basis. It’s similar to what the Protestant Reformation did to Catholicism. In Catholic teaching, you’re only allowed access to God through the interpretations of the Church. The Pope is supposedly the infallible word of God, and the priests represent that official line of theology. So when Martin Luther said, “No, we can read the Bible ourselves and come up with our own interpretation,” well… that opened up a can of worms. Because if everyone is allowed their own interpretation, then interpretations will be as varied as there are people.

Just look at something as simple as food. Everyone you know has a different diet now. Protein-only, vegetables-only, fruit-only, organic-only, junk-food-only, “everything in moderation”—you name it. When I ran a bed and breakfast for years, I learned this quickly. You lay out a table for 10 or 12 people every day, and you see how peculiar and particular everyone’s diet is. I once had one guest who only ate egg whites and another who only ate yolks—at the same table! It reminded me of Jack Sprat and his wife: between the two of them, they licked the platter clean. Scripture interpretation is like that. Everyone has their own take.

What is a mystic?

Mysticism is the idea that we can directly perceive and commune with ethereal forces—that it takes a mystical shift to get past our ordinary way of seeing things and into that ethereal realm. When Martin Luther put the New Testament back into the hands of ordinary people, he opened the door for personal communion with God.I’ve been to many Protestant churches. I didn’t grow up in church—my parents weren’t particularly religious—but I had my own personal relationship with Jesus from about age four. I came up under the tutelage of Jesus personally, not through church teaching. You know those Red Letter Bibles? For years I only read the red letters because I wanted to know what Jesus had to say.

Before the Nag Hammadi and Qumran texts were translated from Coptic Greek, all we knew about Gnostic belief came from the people who hated the Gnostics—the heresiologists. “Heresy” means unorthodox belief, so a heresiologist studies unorthodox beliefs. And the Catholic heresiologists were the only ones who had ever seen the Gnostic scriptures. They taught their flock, “This is wrong because the Church says so.” So everything they ever said about Gnostic scripture was about how terrible and evil it was.

When I was young, I believed that line of thinking. I believed the Nicene Creed was the truth and that we had to accept everything it proposed. I believed in the Protestant formulation of the New Testament. And even though Protestants aren’t under the Pope, each denomination has its own leadership and scriptural emphasis—otherwise they wouldn’t be separate denominations.

But let me get back to the original question: What is gnosis?

The purpose of studying scripture, the New Testament, the Nag Hammadi texts, the Qumran texts, or tuning in to so called Gnostic podcasts is to learn about the ethereal realm—to learn the will of God, who the Father is, and what the Father’s will for us is. Why are we here? What is going on down here? What does God have to do with it and what’s our role in the plan?

There’s a worldwide pushback against Christianity and Judaism right now—people deconstructing not only the Church, but the very concepts of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Christ. But the people pushing back usually don’t know the scriptures and they don’t personally know the Father. They’re generally atheists or, at best, agnostic. They think we’d be better off throwing it all away—even getting rid of the so-called “restrictive” moral precepts of ancient scripture. That thinking comes from ignorance.

The antidote to ignorance is gnosis—eternal knowledge and truth. And across religions and holy books, the teaching is the same: you can only know the will of the Father by sitting quietly, praying, meditating, contemplating your relationship with the ethereal. You cannot find truth by looking at popular culture, politics, social media, television, movies, or university courses. That’s entertainment. That’s distraction. That’s where error comes from. You won’t find gnosis in popular culture.

I notice that television shows and movies depicting angels, devils, and priests don’t come from the knowledge of truth. Their theology is all wrong. It may be entertaining or maddening, depending on your point of view, but it’s certainly not gnosis.Here’s why: Gnosis comes from above. It doesn’t come from below, and it doesn’t come laterally.

You might find inspiration through nature because nature reflects the Fullness. Trees and flowers reach upward. If you sit in a forest and feel uplifted, that inspiration naturally turns your attention upward. You’re not going to sit in a forest, feel the Fullness, and then get angry or hateful or want to conquer people. That’s downward or lateral thinking.

So here’s the big point—the nugget I started with: The God Above All Gods wants to be known.

The God Above All Gods is love, truth, and knowledge. And God wants to be known. The Father wants us to know He’s there. He wants us to know we come from Him and will return to Him. That’s the baseline of gnosis.

We use “He” for the Father because the movement of the Father is outward—Yang—male. The Father is the ocean of consciousness, the ground state of consciousness itself, flowing outward and downward through the Son, through the Totalities, through the Aeons, down to us. We are 2nd Order powers. The ethereal beings are 1st Order powers. The flow is always downward because the Father wants to be known.

If you feel lost, abandoned, hopeless, you’re looking in the wrong direction. You have to look up. Up is where love, belonging, communion, hope, safety, home, and inheritance come from.

We are creatures from above, inhabiting the material plane, and we are going back up.

So what do we need to know?

What gnosis does the Father want us to have so we can feel peace, hope, love, and security? It has to be something accessible to every creature—birds, bees, flowers, trees, bacteria. We’re all 2nd Order powers from the Fullness and we are all returning to our ethereal home. What gnosis do we share with our other 2nd Order companions?

If God intended you to memorize obscure manuscripts, charts, Aeon names, formulas, astrological math—who could do that? If that were the required gnosis, hardly anyone would find the key. That’s what modern Gnosticism often looks like: labyrinthian, always seeking, never finding. But truth isn’t found that way. Truth is found by sitting quietly and turning your attention upward.

If “the Father” feels too far away, turn your attention upward to the Christ. The Christ was conceived by the ethereal realm to help us 2nd Order powers go home. Christ is our passbook. Christ is perfectly structured to save everything below. The New Testament says this—Protestants and Catholics just don’t believe it. Many modern Gnostics don’t believe it either. They think only a tiny remnant will make it.

I don’t think that’s true. If only a few return, the Fullness won’t be full. It will be partial. We are the fruit of the Fullness, and the Fullness won’t be full until we all return.

Flowers aren’t going to memorize books. Birds aren’t going to study theology. My dog doesn’t give a hoot about his astrological chart. Everyone is going back up. All 2nd Order powers will roll back up out of the material plane at the end of time.We get there by realizing our gnosis and accepting the redemption of the Aeon sent to bring us home—Christ. Everyone is going home. You are going home.

It’s like we’re on a big school bus. Christ is waiting at the bus stop to take our hand and walk us home.

Everyone recognizes the Christ—except the people looking for answers down here. They don’t want to look up. Are they going to hell? No. They’re 2nd Order powers too. They’ll go home, but they’ll suffer first, by their own choosing.

Right now you don’t have to suffer. You just have to sit and turn your eyes upward. Because, as it says in the letter to the Colossians out of the New Testament, “For in him all the Fullness was pleased to take up a dwelling and through him to reconcile all things to him.” All things, may I point out, “all things to him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether the things on Earth or the things in the heavens.” (Colossians 1:19; Hart’s New Testament).

Now Paul does add a little catch phrase at the end here. Paul says, “If you indeed abide in the faith, established and steadfast and not moved away from hope in the good tidings that you have heard proclaimed to every creature under heaven…” (Col 1:23). Christians generally think that last sentence, if you abide in faith and are not moved away, means that if you don’t abide in faith and you are moved away, that you will not make it into heaven. But that isn’t what it says here. It says it’s “proclaimed to every creature under heaven,” and that includes every one of us 2nd order powers, for Christ has already reconciled “all things to him.”

Not just the good guys, not just the ones who died after proclaiming the glory of God. No. All things to him.

If you don’t accept the redemption of Christ now, it just means that you’re going to suffer hopelessness and despair, and then you’re going to die in hopelessness and despair. But why continue to suffer? Christ reconciled all things to him through his life and death as Jesus. Jesus was the mortal incarnation of the eternal Christ, specifically sent to bring us the gift of reconciliation. You will ultimately be redeemed.

Chapter two of the letter to Colossians says, “while you were dead in trespasses and in your foreskin of flesh, he gave you life along with him, forgiving all trespasses, expunging what is written by hand against us—contrary to us—in ordinances, and has removed it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; Stripping the Archons and Powers, he exposed them in the open, leading them prisoner along with him in a triumphal procession” (Hart’s New Testament).

And this speaking of “the foreskin of flesh” is a reference to our physical human bodies. The foreskin is our covering. It’s the place where we 2nd order powers are melded to the material of the Demiurge. Christ came to pull apart that melding and to free us from bondage to the Demiurge.

So Paul is saying while you were yet dead in your sin, he forgave all of your trespasses. He forgave all of your sins. It doesn’t say after you accepted him, he forgave all your trespasses. He says, “While you were dead in your sin, he forgave all your trespasses and nailed them to the cross,” along with his own dying flesh (Colossians 2:13). It also says that he exposes the Archons and takes them prisoner.

So, contrary to what the churches teach, it is biblical to believe in universal salvation because Christ conquered not only sin, but the Archons and Powers of evil. The light is shining on them now.

Back in the letter to the Romans, in Chapter 5, it says, “The Anointed, indeed, while we were yet weak, died in due season on behalf of the impious” (Romans 5:6; Hart). So once again, Christ didn’t die on behalf of the elect. He died on behalf of sinners, on behalf of people that are lost—not only lost but living in sin, no matter what your sin is.

In the footnote to this verse in Hart’s translation of the New Testament, Hart comments that here and in the surrounding verses, “Whether intentional or not, the plain meaning of the verse is that of universal condemnation, annulled by universal salvation.”

And that’s a really beautiful thing. That is a glorious thing because through the power of Christ, we’re all redeemed.

I urge you to turn to the Christ now—not out of fear, not to escape hell, but to remember the gnosis you were born with. We come from the Father, and we will return to the Father. We are the children of the Aeons, and you are one of them: a beloved child of the realms above. No one in the Fullness desires your suffering. Our task in this deficient realm is simple and profound: to remember the Father and the Fullness, and then—through the willing assistance of the Christ—to love others, to love ourselves, and to love the Father.

All true change arises from love. Force produces only suffering and slavery. The Demiurge would keep you in bondage. Cast off those shackles, whatever form they take. Rest in the peace that comes from remembering who you truly are, and let the love that flows in an unending stream from above move outward through you into the world.

Until next week–God bless us all. And Onward and Upward!

Gnostic Insights is not backed by a media company, a church, or a foundation. It is a one-woman effort. Every podcast episode, transcript, image, edit, and publication is created by me personally.

To support this work, I run a bed and breakfast in Southern Oregon. The long hours spent making beds, cleaning bathrooms, and caring for guests are what currently pay the bills and keep the podcast online.

My goal is to make clear and simple gnosis freely available to anyone seeking deeper understanding. If that mission resonates with you, I invite you to become part of it. Your financial support helps cover hosting costs, production expenses, and, most importantly, the time required to continue creating new content.

If this work has brought value to your life, please consider giving back. Together, we can continue sharing these teachings with those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Thank you for your support.