Gnosis, Gurus, and Meditation

and a conversation with Bill

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights. The first half of this episode is about choosing the higher road to find your gnosis, about letting go of the world. In the second half of this episode I was able to put in about 10 minutes of a conversation that my brother and I had following our group Zoom chat the other day, and it has to do with the nature of a guru and the nature of yoga and whether or not meditation is good.

I know that most people seem to want a ritual to deepen their gnosis—prayers or chants or meditation or physical activities. And what I’d like to let you know today is that it’s not really necessary, because we are born with this gnosis fully inside of us, and we are in touch with the Father at all times whether or not we recognize it. All you need to do is recognize it. All you really need to do is knock and the door shall open.

That’s a promise that Jesus made. “Seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will open” (Matthew 7:7). Really, that’s all. It takes a contrite heart, which means that you repent of living a vice-filled life. If you are attached to vice or you’re attached to material possessions, then it’s harder to knock, because you don’t need to, and you don’t want to. You want to hide if you know that you are “sinning.” And you know, we don’t need to go into deep theological discussions about what is sin or what is vice, because I’m sure that everybody knows the difference between virtue and vice, and either you prefer dwelling in darkness and all that that implies. You know the darkness gives physical thrills because the Demiurge is in charge of the material, but it does nothing for you spiritually except keep you in darkness, keep you pulled toward the Demiurge like a magnet.

So, if you are addicted to some substance, or if you are addicted to pornography or gambling, or you hate your neighbor, or you hate those people on the other side of the world—you know that you are not on the right side, and I don’t need to tell you that. You know that. But if you want to live on the virtuous side of the ledger, if you want to do the primary directive, which is love, our task is to spread love and to demonstrate the Father’s love down here in this material world. And by so doing that, it not only shows love to other humans and other second-order creatures, it demonstrates what love is to the Demiurge itself, because the Demiurge doesn’t have the life of the Father.

The Demiurge is cut off from its higher self, just like a wayward ego that’s so puffed up and absolutely full of itself doesn’t remember or doesn’t care about its One true Self that comes from the Father and from the Fullness. So, it may be that a person wants to cling to a worldly, material, vice-filled life, because, hey, hey, it feels good, at least for a while, until you bottom out. However, it may be that you know it doesn’t feel good, that you don’t want to live a vice-filled life, but you can’t seem to help yourself. You feel powerless before the Demiurge and the archons that are continually tempting you into that vice. You want to lay it down. You tried, but you just can’t seem to do it. And so, therefore, you feel guilt. You feel shame. You feel powerless and weak. Well, that is also a spiritual condition that is ripe for recognition and repentance.

So, perhaps you have repented. Maybe you’ve repented continually while trying to put down that vice, but you keep falling back into it. So, the repentance isn’t quite doing enough, and now you’re wondering, well, what else can I do? How can I reach the Father? How can I know the love of God? How can I get a hold of that correcting algorithm that the Christ has brought to the Earth on my behalf? That’s a good position to be in, because you recognize and you want redemption. So, the first step is repentance, that is to say, no, I don’t want to do this anymore. I lay it down—to rebuke Satan. Get thee behind me, Satan, is something you can say.

Then the second thing is to turn your eyes upward to the Father. Turn your heart over to the Christ—that’s the redemption part. If you haven’t taken that second step of aligning yourself with the Father and the Fullness and Christ, then you haven’t gone far enough in your repentance. You need to align yourself with the Christ power, that is to say, with God’s will. You need to seek, knock, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall open. Seek, and you will find. It’s a promise that Jesus made. Have you knocked earnestly and asked for Jesus to open the door or for the Christ to open the door or for the Father or the Fullness to open the door? Have you said, I want in, please take me back?

You know, the story of the prodigal son is that the prodigal son told his father he didn’t want to stay and be a farmer alongside his brother and his dad. He wanted his inheritance now, and he wanted to go away to the big city and become somebody. So, his father gave him his money, and off he went. And he did not have a good time in the big city. He tried. It didn’t work out. He eventually found himself being a pig farmer. Well, not even a farmer, but just a hired hand at a pig farm slopping out pig stalls, which is anti-kosher because part of the Old Testament law, you don’t eat pigs, you stay away from the pigs, as it is currently with Islam and still in Judaism.

So, he finds himself slopping out pig stalls, and he is at his end. He’s completely broken. And he decides, what am I doing this for? It was a lot better at home on the farm. And he basically throws down the shovel and goes home with his head hung low and full of shame. And he said, the ranch hands at my father’s farm live a better life than I’m living now. I’ll just go back and work for my father, even if he won’t take me back as his son because I squandered my inheritance.

By the way, can you see that this is an archetypal story? This is a story about being a child of God and leaving the Father and mucking about in the world, seeing that it’s not so great out there, and then coming back with repentance, with a contrite heart to come back to the Father’s house.

In the story of the prodigal son, when he sees the son coming home on the road, even before he gets there, he says, hey, go slaughter a goat. (Unfortunately, always with the blood.) Go slaughter the goat, and we’ll have a great feast tonight and invite everybody because the prodigal son has returned home. And prodigal means wasteful, spendthrift. But the Father isn’t holding that against him. He welcomes him back with open arms and throws a giant barbecue in honor of him coming home. Well, it made the son that stayed home a bit mad, but that’s not the point of this story. And so the Father welcomes the prodigal son home.

And when we’re away from God, and we’re living in the world in a full-fledged, sinful manner, or on the vice side of the ledger rather than the virtue side of the Father, if we’re taking our marching orders from the Demiurge and his archons rather than from the Father and Christ, we are prodigals at that point. So you need to both repent, that is, say, I don’t want to do this anymore, I hate it. And then you need to turn around from facing the world to facing God, to facing the Father. And you need not feel too ashamed or too full of guilt to turn around and face the Father. That’s what the Father dearly desires. He wants you to come home. That’s all he wants is for you to come home and experience his love. And that love is unconditional. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done.

You can be the worst person ever if you repent and say, No, I don’t want to be a prodigal anymore. I want to come home. Please, please take me home. It’s like when Dorothy clicks her heels together in The Wizard of Oz and says, I want to go home. I want to go home. That’s the attitude you need to have to turn to the Father.

You don’t need to take a workshop in meditation. You don’t need to take a workshop in esoteric rituals. You don’t need to read book after book after book of Gnostic teaching. You don’t need to memorize the names and jobs of the different angels and Aeons. You don’t need to do any of that. All you need to do is repent, turn around, and be redeemed. That is, be bought out of slavery by the Father’s love. Redemption refers to something that’s been put up in a pawn shop or put as collateral against a loan, and then the loan fails, or you really need that thing back from the pawn shop. You redeem it to get it back. Well, the Father wants us all to be redeemed. Those are the steps, and it’s called redemption. It’s the same thing.

So we know that we’re all out here lost, for all have fallen short of the glory of God. It’s obvious. So you repent. That is, you stop chasing the worldly goods, or you stop indulging the vices that the Demiurge tempts you with. You say no. You put it down. Put it down. It’s a meme that you are holding on to, that, oh, I really need this thing. Yeah, I don’t want to do it, but oh, it feels so good, or geez, I just can’t seem to help myself. Yes, you can. Every addict who has quit has quit.

And this step of putting it down, stripping that meme of need off of your ego, repenting, turning toward the Father, turning toward God—you can imagine that in your mind. You can imagine that sinful thing before you, or maybe it’s sitting there before you right now, and you don’t need to imagine it. And then you just literally, or in your imagination, turn away. Now, how do you face God? God’s there. God’s all around, remember? Every cell of our body contains the Fullness of God. So we don’t have to go anywhere or do anything to get it, other than to lay down the world. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will open. That’s a promise.

I was asked the other day on our group chat that we had, (thank you very much for all who participated, it was really great to see your faces), whether or not I or my brother practice meditation. And the answer is no, we don’t. Not now. My brother Bill and I have both passed through stages of meditation before we found gnosis, but we didn’t find gnosis by passing through those stages of meditation. That was a rabbit trail that we went down.

Bill used to practice TM, Transcendental Meditation. I used to practice Kriya Yoga, which is meditation as taught by the Self-Realization Fellowship. But it didn’t get us anywhere.

It didn’t bring us into God’s presence. One of the fellows who participated in our online chat the other day via Zoom brought up the idea of Kundalini Yoga not being of the Father. And that was an excellent insight. Afterward, the next day, Billy and I spoke about it, and we wanted to talk about this idea, because we had never thought about the source of Kundalini. But indeed, this guy is right.

After the Zoom call, my brother and I discussed Kundalini Yoga. Here’s ten minutes of our discussion:

Bill: Okay, well, I’m just jumping around with ideas here. It started with the discussion of Kundalini. And it really got me thinking about what that actually is. And the Eastern traditions, particularly, talk about it. We know that the brain is affected by anything that, you know, like drugs and so forth, certain kinds of psychedelics cause the brain to alter, and people have experiences that are not unlike Oneness feelings, right? So it does have an effect on our material body.

The question is, what is Kundalini? And is it acting through life energy, top down, or is it an imitation? I think it’s an imitation. I think that Kundalini is really electromagnetic energy in the material, at the material level, which does affect the brain. And one can have experience off the brain. So I mean, Kundalini is one of two things—I believe it to be electromagnetic as an imitation. But if it were the other, like chi energy or life energy, and so forth, then we’re claiming that Kundalini affects life energy. And that just should not be.

Because look, let’s think of it this way. If the intent of Kundalini is to come into Oneness, right? That’s the attempt. And that therefore gets rid of a person’s identity, right? That’s what it means at that moment: they’ve lost their identity. Well, if that’s the case, then we just got rid of the Aeonic construction. So Kundalini is affecting the Aeonic creation of our identity. That shouldn’t be.

Cyd: Well, of our identity, right. But the Aeonic Fullness would still be there, because that’s the Self.

Bill: Yeah, but we’re also the Aeonic identities. That’s the construction of all our talents and gifts and everything we talk about.

Cyd: Right. And that is not God’s will that we should be obliterated.

Bill: That’s right.

Cyd: That’s good. That’s good.

Bill: If you obliterate, you’re getting rid of the Aeonic creation that way. Well, it shouldn’t be. No.

Cyd: Right. So you’re saying the end goal of Kundalini, which is moving into the One for as long as you can maintain it, is not a proper goal anyway.

Bill: That’s right. We were not created to be that way. We’re second order.

Cyd: Right. We’re second order. We come in with our identities, and that is who we are.

Bill: Absolutely. And that’s a fractal—Aeons having their identity. They don’t lose their identity.

Cyd: So actually, then, if the Demiurge is aware of this kind of thing, and how this kind of thing works, it’s actually a demiurgic plan to obliterate the Fullness within.

Bill: That’s right. That’s exactly right. That was the next point that I wanted to make is that, yeah, and that’s why it’s imitation. It’s the best that the Demiurge can do. He can give you the illusion. He can create spiritual sensibilities, which are imitation spiritual.

Cyd: Right. Because it’s actually a form of emotion. And of course, we have the mud up concept as well.

Bill: Well, that’s right.

Cyd: It rises. Coming from the mud up.

Bill: That’s right. That’s important to the point is, yeah, it’s coming bottom up. Yeah. So it’s delusional.

Cyd: Well, there you are. That’s a pretty radical assertion to claim that Kundalini Yoga is demiurgic.

Bill: That’s right. That’s the best the Demiurge can do. And it can so befuddle, it creates this meme of spirituality that you’re really not achieving.

Cyd: Okay. So jumping off of that, you know, I learned to do the Kriya yoga, practiced Kriya meditation for a couple of years. And with Kriya, Kriya standing for Christ, and this is Paramahansa’s technique, you are looking upward and forward. But what you’re doing is projecting your third eye spot. And then when you achieve it, it is considered to be Christ. Well, that’s not true. That’s not Christ. So the Kriya yoga is a bit off too. And of course, you have to sit for hours with your eyes in the upward third eye position.

Bill: Yeah. Does that sound Gnostic to you?

Cyd: No.

Bill: No, no, no.

Cyd: Now explain, explain Billy, why is it not Gnostic to sit and meditate for hours on end?

Bill: Well, I believe this thing called Gnostic meditation, that’s something else we need to talk about. I don’t know that we can do it at this moment. But that’s a form of focusing your awareness on the Father. Now, Transcendental Meditation, of course, is classic, right? It came to America, it’s a big deal. It has all that research on it and how it affects people positively, blah, blah, and so forth. I learned something about it. And I got a teacher of it really upset that I was talking that way. And it was really interesting, which tells me I hit the button. Mantras that are given Transcendental Meditation—they’re dead gurus. They’re names of gurus. And then when you take the next step in Transcendental Meditation, you’ve got to pay more, right? Yeah, the next step is that the whole expression of the mantra is, I adore you, so-and-so. I adore you. So whatever the your mantra was, I adore, and then the mantra comes in, I adore a name, or whatever. And that is utterly pulling us away from…

Cyd: You’re right because the glory has to always remain on the Father and the Christ.

Bill: Right. And it’s giving gurus, you know, you’ve heard me say gnosis is within, you don’t follow somebody out there. You know, at best, you have facilitators that mine it, like Cyd. You know, the idea is opening up, help an individual open up their gnosis, but it isn’t to follow them. Okay, there’s a name for this called cults. And that’s where cults come in.

Cyd: Yeah, where you are worshipping the leader, the human leader, rather than the Father.

Bill: Right. And it is a presumption that if you’re a guru follower, which guru do you pick? That’s what you do—you find your guru. And that’s very Eastern. It’s an illusion.

Cyd: Mm hmm. Yeah, that would be. Yep. I agree with you there. Speaking of Yoga, though, one of the books by Paramahansa Yogananda is called The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You. And I need to go dig through my books, which were all boxed up a couple of years ago and put in the garage, but I need to dig them out. And I want to see what Paramahansa actually did say about the Christ, because he did follow—you know, Jesus was his guru. And if you make Jesus your guru, well, then you’re doing OK, right? I would imagine that’s not off base, although then there’s Yoga practice on top of it.

Bill: No, I don’t think so.

Cyd: Because it’s your human projection of your expectations of Christ, right?

Bill: Yeah. The other is, Jesus was the perfect human. We’re all capable of that. The point is that Jesus represents what it is we are capable of—as the best of second order.

Cyd: Right. Yes. Right.

OK. So if you make Jesus your guru, you’re kind of stopping at the point of Jesus. That’s not the end.

Cyd: Oh, you’re saying you’re only worshiping the perfect human. You’re not going beyond to the Father, except that the whole business about the Trinity that, you know, Christians identify Jesus as one of the aspects of the Father—you know, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Bill: I don’t know… The Son may indeed be the first monad.

Cyd: Yeah, I know. We think differently about the Son—that when we say the Son of God, we’re talking about the first monad up there above.

Bill: Well, I think that’s the case with the Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Different than Jesus. Not Jesus.

Cyd: Right. Except for the Christ aspect, because the Christ does embody all of the perfection of the Father. Jesus is the human manifestation of that full embodiment of the Father. I don’t know. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t… I hesitate to lessen the guru capability of Rabbi Jesus in any way.

Bill: But back to the guru point—we’re trying to mine gnosis, not trying to follow something out there.

Cyd: Yeah, because the Gnosis is within.  

Bill: So Jesus is the facilitator of our Gnosis within. That’s his role.

Cyd: Right.

Jumping back in here is an afterword of the discussion with Bill.

His point is that we mind the Gnosis within us, and we don’t need to look to an exterior guru to tell us what to believe. However, I’ve always followed the dictum: WWJD. Have you ever heard that? Do you remember that? WWJD means What Would Jesus Do? Because Jesus was the perfect human, Jesus did know. Jesus was always in contact with his higher Self, with his Gnosis, and with his Father above. So there’s a deep connection between Jesus and truth, and Jesus and the Father, more so, way more so, than with ordinary human gurus, particularly gurus you find out here on the internet. If you imagine what would Jesus do in most situations, the answer is absolutely clear. Now whether or not you want to call that following Jesus as a guru, I don’t care. But I have found that if I don’t know what to do in a situation, I imagine, well, what would Jesus do? And then the answer is very clear.

One of the fellows who was participating in the group chat the other day said he used to practice kundalini meditation and has discovered, now that he’s Gnostic, that that kundalini energy is not from God. And then I realized kundalini energy starts at the base of the spine and works upward, and it comes out the top of your head when you achieve it. And that kundalini energy is starting at the mud level. It’s mud up. Kundalini goes from the bottom up. And according to our Gnostic gospel, bottom up is the realm of the Demiurge. I heard a very interesting speaker recently on a YouTube video that seemed to have good things to say. But then afterwards, I looked him up, and his major modality is Kundalini Yoga. Well, right there, that would disqualify him from the Gnostic path, because that’s drawing the energy up from the bottom.

And we don’t need to work our way up to God. We just need to reach up to God, and there He is. There’s an article over there at https://asimpleexplanation.blogspot.com called A Simple Explanation of Stay Centered, that I wrote in May of 2011. And it’s interesting going back to these old articles that are still posted so anybody can read them. And again, this is pre-Gnostic, and so I discuss what it means to stay centered or to be centered. And it has to do with maintaining your position within the great toroidal border, the torus of the boundary that surrounds our universe. But you don’t have to go there. If this is confusing or you’re not drawn to it, don’t go there, because I’m saying you don’t need to go there. If that helps you to visualize reaching out to the Father, you can realize that the Father is no farther away than the very essence and core of your immediate Self and the essence and core of every cell, every part of your body.

You don’t have to go anywhere to find God. You simply have to raise your eyes to God. Now, you can do that literally. You know, you can raise your hands to God. That’s what people in charismatic churches do. They raise their hands to God in prayer or in praise. I’ve been singing a song lately called Strong, which I’m enjoying very much. And there’s a lyric in that song that says, I hit my knees with my hands held high, saying, Dear Lord Jesus, you know I can’t do this on my own. I can’t do this on my own. I’d recommend you go and listen to that song, Strong, by Ann Wilson. Yeah, I love to sing songs for you guys here. I don’t know if it’s legal, though. These songs are all copyrighted, and I don’t know if I am allowed to podcast my singing a copyrighted song. Music is a wonderful thing. It always lifts you up, and it’s not dogmatic the way preachers can get.

It’s uplifting, and we always want to go up. Uplifting, you see? Down in the dumps versus uplifting. Those are the two directions. Down and back is regret, sorrow, vice, the Demiurge. Onward and upward is the Fullness, the Father, and Christ.

So, onward and upward, and God bless us all.