How The Hierarchy of the Fullness Came To Be

In 2019, I wrote a book called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, and what I am attempting to do in this podcast is talk you through the book so that you will have your own personal and very full understanding of what Gnosis is, and hopefully be able to actually realize Gnosis while you’re hearing these podcasts.

By the way, what is Gnosis? We keep talking about Gnosis and Gnostic. Gnosis means knowing, and in the Gnostic frame of reference, Gnosis refers to remembering the truth of our existence and our creation, and the creation of the entire cosmos. It is thought that we hold all of this knowledge within ourselves, and we have complete access to the Creator of the universe at any time that we turn our focus on the Creator, and it is this direct conduit to the Creator that gives us what is called Gnosis.

G-N-O-S-I-S, that’s a Greek word. Another related word to Gnosis, and this is a big word, is anamnesis. You know the word amnesia means forgetting? Anamnesis means not forgetting. So, the process of coming to Gnosis is a process called anamnesis. Today we’re going to talk about the qualities of the All, and how the All became what is called the Pleroma, and the Aeons of the Pleroma.

Many people claim that it’s impossible to know or describe the full glory of the transcendent, immortal Father of Consciousness due to our own limitations. I mean, how could limited beings such as ourselves possibly imagine the greatness of the Originator of the universe, much less our place in the grand design? Wouldn’t lesser beings reflect a diminished view of God? Wouldn’t these lesser beings be limited to offering a tarnished glory that falls far short of the object of their praise? The Tripartite Tractate, which is the book of the Nag Hammadi that I’m working off of, the Tripartite puts it this way.

If the members of the All had risen to give glory according to the individual powers of each, they would have brought forth a glory that was only a semblance of the Father, who Himself is the All.

Thus, creation would have been doomed from the outset to never comprehend the full glory of either the Father or itself. According to the Gnostic gospel, the Father realized this impossibility and so built a helpful workaround meant to aid comprehension: selfless union and cooperation with others in a shared task. Quoting from the Tripartite again,

For that reason they were drawn into mutual intermingling union and oneness through the singing of praise. From their assembled Fullness they were one and at the same time many. Accurately reflecting the One who Himself is the entirety of the All. Out of perfect union with itself and with the Son, and by means of a single shared effort, the All gave glory to the Eternal One who had brought it forth.

The glory given out of this perfect communion left the All perfect and full, as it was perfect and full to begin with, and the object of their glory was also perfect and full. This phase of the All is referred to as the second glory, with the Son being called the first glory. Then when the Son differentiated into all of its variables, into all of its individual parts, like rays bursting out of a central star, that is called the All, and this is what we’re discussing today.

Now, this perfect state of union with the Son and communion with each other didn’t last.

Because of their combined effort, the All became self-aware, and it became they. So at first the All was a singular entity that was a complete duplication and reflection of the Son, who itself was a complete duplication and reflection of the Father of Consciousness itself. So at first the All was one singular organism, since it was freshly evolved out of the Son, but then it became self-aware, and the various variables within the Son, the various parts of that singular entity, each of those parts became self-aware.

And that is what is causing this evolution of consciousness from the singular It of the All to the They. No longer simply an unaware member of the All singing in unison with the same song of praise, the All became aware of its individual traits, and the singing came to be produced by the will of each individual Aeon. An Aeon is spelled A-E-O-N. And in Gnosticism, an Aeon is an entity. It is a singular consciousness. So each Aeon is a reflection of the Father’s countless qualities and powers.

The Aeons conceived themselves in order to know themselves in fulfillment of the Father’s desire for pure consciousness to become differentiated and self-aware. And in philosophy, this is called monadism, not that you have to know that, but the Son is a monad, that is a singular thing. And the Father wished to have company, let’s say, and so the monad split into individual POVs, or points of view.

The moment It became They, individual identities arose and immediately sorted themselves into a hierarchy. Quoting from the Tripartite,

For this reason they exist as minds over minds, words over words, superiors over superiors, degrees over degrees, being ranked one above the other. Each of those who glorify has his own station, rank, dwelling place, and place of rest, which is the glorification he brings forth.

This hierarchical arrangement of the qualities of the All is known as the fruit of the third glory in Gnostic cosmology. It’s also called the first order of powers and the Fullness. The Fullness is everything that will ever be in potential. Plato referred to this as the forms, Plato’s forms. Every photon, every particle and proton, every personality, every position and rank that someone could hold, every physical formula, physics, chemistry, all imprinted upon this what was a singular unit that is now broken out. These potentialities are not manifest.

At first they weren’t self-aware, but they became self-aware. The cooperation amongst the All is the prototype of the simple explanation’s golden rule, by the way, which puts it this way:

In order for units of consciousness to work together and join for the greater good, they need to share relevant information, they need to assist one another’s efforts, and they need to love one another.

So in the same way that the All sat in perfect communion together while singing the same song of praise, so do we all instantiate the pattern of cooperation needed to get the job done when we work together for the greater good without selfish motivation.

The instant the Aeons became self-aware, the All fell out of their unthinking blissful union and arranged themselves into what’s called the Fullness of God. This phrase is mentioned quite often in the New Testament, but it has lost its association with its actual meaning.

It’s not just the Fullness of God, like you’re thinking of God all in one big thing. The whole point of the Fullness was God differentiating into graspable concepts, things that we can understand. So the Fullness of God is a different entity than the Father. I believe that distinction has gotten lost in modern Christianity. So we were discussing the Fullness, which is a hierarchy, and hierarchy looks like a pyramid. Just picture a pyramid.

The hierarchy of the Fullness prefigures the patterns of our universe. “Minds over minds, words over words, superiors over superiors” refers to personalities and how they relate to one another, like our personalities. “Degrees over degrees and ranks” refers to the manner by which things are sorted, stacked, and ordered. First, second, third, superior, inferior, right, left, inside, outside. These are the degrees over degrees and the ranks. It reflects the fact that each self-aware entity has its own place in the grand scheme, with a location different than others and its very own point of view.

Quoting from the Tripartite,

For each of the Aeons is a name corresponding to each of the Father’s qualities and powers. Since He exists in many names, it is by mingling and through mutual harmony that they are able to speak of Him by means of logical thought. Thus the Father is a single name because He is one, but nevertheless innumerable in His qualities and names.

Interesting that logical thought was mentioned in the Tripartite Tractate, because it is important to realize that logic is part of the mind of God. We are given the ability to reason and to be logical.

The newly self-aware Aeons were not separated from the One Who Is. Rather, their birth has the form of a spreading out by which the Father spreads Himself out into that which He wishes, in order that those who have gone forth from Him may exist as well. The Father of the Aeons, that being the Son, and embodiment of the Formless One, is the Holy Spirit that breathes through the members of the All and moves them to search for the Unknown. Just as somebody is moved by a fragrance to seek the source of the fragrance. For its sweetness lets the Aeons sense an indescribable pleasure and gives them the thought that they should be united with the One Who Desires, that they should know Him in oneness, and that they should assist one another, having no occasion to turn away through thoughtlessness from that in which they are placed.

The Son’s Spirit is the trace by which He may be sought. Quoting again,

The whole structure of Aeons, then, is yearning and seeking to find the Father perfectly and completely, and this is their irreproachable union. For the Father gave the Aeons a starting point and a root, so that they are stations on the calm road leading to Him.

For He spread out faith and prayer for what they do not see, a firm hope in what they do not comprehend, a fertile love longing for what they do not behold, an eternally receptive understanding of the mind, a blessing that is richness and freedom, and, for their thoughts, the wisdom of one whose desire is the glory of the Father.

Quoting from my book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated,

The hierarchy defines higher versus lower. It orders first, second, third, and fourth, superior and inferior, inside and out, action and rest, every other possible relationship, particles and their spins, waves and frequencies, atoms, molecules, attraction and repulsion, cells and DNA, every protein fold and enzyme.

The how, what, why, when, who, and where of all that was to come began as the perfectly rendered Fullness. As DNA anticipates an organism and a blueprint promises a building, the Fullness embodied the perfect plan of Paradise. For the Aeons manifested within their hierarchy all of the Father’s innumerable qualities, including consciousness, logic, and love.

The Aeons of the Fullness were given wisdom and prudence and a constant thirst to seek their Creator. This gave them a desire to align themselves with the Father’s Holy Spirit through the process of giving glory.  Giving glory is the means by which we align ourselves with the originating consciousness. It’s like a homing beacon. The Aeons yearned for communion with their Father, for He had planted His root deep within their hearts, and they recognized themselves as His branches and His fruit.

The newly self-aware Aeons were not separated from the One Who Is, for their Father was the Son and embodiment of the Formless One, and His Holy Spirit flowed throughout them as a reassuring presence. Although the Aeons dwelt within the single body of the Fullness, they were each an independent self. Their variety required them to work together and remain in full agreement, for only through their union could they approach the Father’s greatness.

All for One and One for All is their song, and they sing in perfect harmony. Now I have to share a kind of a funny image I have concerning the Fullness of God and what it looks like. As I say, a hierarchy is like a pyramid, so when I picture the Aeons of God, I picture them all as golden cannonballs stacked in a big pyramid. So they all look alike, but they each have a particular place in the hierarchy. Picture a given cannonball and where it might be in a gigantic stack of countless cannonballs in the Fullness of God, this gigantic golden pyramid of balls.

Now if you go to YouTube and you look at videos of what are called slime mold, strangely enough, I always think of the Fullness of God as like a slime mold. The slime mold creature is comprised of identical cells, each one exactly the same, but they’re all side by side making up one organism. Whereas, for example, in our bodies, our cells are all different. Your skin cell is different than your heart cell, for example. But in a slime mold, all the cells are exactly the same. They are moving and acting and thinking as one single organism, a big clump of cells, but each of the cells is an individual. Also, they’re perfect fractals. Each cell replicates the entire slime mold. So if you cut out a single cell out of a slime mold, it will now become its own mass of slime mold cells and know everything that the previous body out of which it was cut knew. This has all been shown scientifically. You can look it up online. So that is how I think of the Fullness of God, as this beautiful combination of pyramidal golden orbs, kind of acting and thinking like a slime mold. They’re each individuals, but they are also at the same time one.

So now these are the principal players in the cosmology of Gnosticism. The originating consciousness, which is called the Father, the embodiment of that consciousness, which is called the Son, the differentiation of the Son into the All, and then the differentiation of the All becoming self-aware and becoming the Fullness of God and sorting themselves. The second they became self-aware, they sorted themselves into that golden pyramid, as I think of it.

Before they sorted themselves, they were like the rays of sun coming out from the central entity of the Son. When they became self-aware, they kind of swam away and formed this pyramid. Everything else that we see around us, ourselves, our worlds, our entire universe, is all prefigured in the Fullness of God, in the All. The Fullness is also called the Pleroma, which is another Greek word that just means everything. The Fullness of God is like the blueprint of our universe. Everything that will ever come to be is sitting there in that golden pyramidal stack.

I’m going to end this podcast with a clear Gospel message straight from the Tripartite Tractate, regarding exactly what one must come to believe in order to be, quote, saved. In case you’re curious, we’re skipping ahead, but why not? So here’s a quote.

There is no other baptism apart from this one alone, which is the redemption into God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when confession is made through faith in those names, which are a single name of the Gospel, when they have come to believe what has been said to them, namely, that they exist. From this they have their salvation, those who have believed that they exist. This is attaining an invisible way to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in an undoubting faith.

So that seems to be the underlying core of the Gnostic salvation message. No other arcane rituals are needed, no gnosis other than believing that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, also known as the Fullness of God, or the pleroma, existed before you did. Other ancient Gnostic texts claim that this is the true essence of the Gospel that Jesus preached.

Keep in mind that these are the very texts considered so distracting by the early Church Fathers that they were buried in the Egyptian desert in the 4th century AD to protect them from being burned as the work of heretics, keeping them safe until their re-emergence in 1945. So back to the pleroma. In case you haven’t guessed, the Fullness is where we all wind up eventually. By the end of the universe, at the end of time, most everyone’s will have come on board team God, so to speak, and then the fruit of the pleroma, us, will have returned home to the fold to live happily ever after amidst the unending joy and love of the Fullness, all tucked up inside the Son who lives tucked up inside the Father. This is why I end my phone calls and whatnot with friends by saying onward and upward. Onward and upward is our destination.

Onward and upward is the way we return home to the pleroma. We’ll talk a lot more about this as time goes on. All right, I’ll see you in the next episode. God bless.