It was a difficult interview for me, too. I found myself answering questions out of Tessa's frame of experience and reference. I agree with Tessa that we have different vocabularies for similar ideas. I think my answers were probably more confusing than enlightening or even explanatory as I attempted to address her questions from her frame of reference rather than mine. At my own website and podcast I am able to explain these things much more clearly because I am not standing on the outside looking in, but am rather on the inside, looking out, so my podcasts and articles come from my point of view.
I don't approach gnosticism from a historical perspective but from a conceptual perspective. The Nag Hammadi book that makes most sense to me is the Tripartite Tractate, and those are the concepts I explain in my books and podcast. History is history, and that's fine for people who love history. I am more interested in concepts and truth. The particular gnosticism I teach is Christian Gnosticism, which seems to me to be the true proto-Christian religion, prior to the Popes and the Emperor's meddling.
I agree with Tessa and comments below that human-made institutions generally enforce power and not truth. So, I agree that it is silly to promote celibacy because some ancient manmade "gnostic" institution thought that was the way to go. I don't find that instruction in the Nag Hammadi. Quite the contrary, according to the Tripartite Tractate every shadow that emanated from the Fall needs to be countered by one of us redeemed humans showing it the light. If we are not born, then we can't counter the shadow. It's an esoteric point, but one that demonstrates the silliness of institutional proscriptions.
Thank you, Tessa, for the interview and for including the link to my singing. I appreciate you and I agree that our focus on love promotes an open mind and heart. I think the many months it took you to digest and release this interview and article shows that we both had a difficult time seeing from each other's point of view and yet we largely agree.
Cyd, when I was editing the interview, I could just feel the love of your soul. I thank you from my heart for sharing your sacred and doing the best job despite the difference in our language. And your singing, good Lord, just beautiful.
Also, thank you for being patient about the timing of this article. You could have gotten mad and you didn't, and it speaks of your character.
I am just so happy to have had this conversation, cryptic and convoluted as it was. Many hugs!! And I hope a lot of people get to enjoy your voice! You sing spectacularly!
I think you did better than you think you did. I am still listening.
I agree that the vengeful "God" is not the "God of Love", and that Gnosis is the key.
"Original sin" was never a well-founded precept in any way.
I have read "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels, and the Gospel of Thomas, as she explained it. (Good for digging out agricultural phosphate deposits in Nag Hamadi.)
I came to the conclusion that the teachings of Jesus were largely destroyed.
I never rejected the teachings of Jesus, having had gnostic experiences, but I have taken up the Buddhist path for a little over 2 decades, as a path of self-work and work of compassion and love, which I see as the same work.
As I experienced it, Jesus brought me to this path, when I found that his teachings had been destroyed.
It is always difficult to speak overtly about what is experienced personally, because it cannot readily transfer, and is easily misinterpreted, unless the listener has had a very similar experience.
Thank you, John, for bringing your love to the table as well. I am so grateful to the community of good, thinking people here where we are all pitching in our two cents and do it, with very rare exceptions, with the best of intention. My heart is filled with joy and gratitude, in the most authentic way.
Thanks, John. I also felt that the Christian religion did not represent Jesus well, so for decades I have been an unchurched follower of Jesus. I mostly identified with the Tao te Ching, so you and I both took an eastern turn out of conventional Christianity. In 2001 I wrote a theory of everything called A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything that looks at all human endeavour, from science and math to all sorts of religious writing and cultural expression. I distilled from all of these great works a few simple precepts like the Golden Rule and fractal mathematics that appear to apply to everything from the spiritual on through physics and chemistry. People who are spiritual but non-religious seem to like it very much. Years later I read the Tripartite Tractate and it really clicked for me, the same way the Tao te Ching does. The refreshing thing about the Tripartite Tractate is that it appears to be the proto-Christianity of Jesus, prior to the Nicene Council's censorship. As a mature follower of Jesus, I can recognize this book as part of the gospel.
I find it very easy to read so far. I always found Carl Jung's work to be internally illuminated for me, also. You might have read The Tao of Physics at some point. I loved physics in college, and would walk across campus in 1976-1977 lost in musings. I always resolved that all truth must agree with all other truth, but I could not find professors interested in that, not even my excellent second-semester Engineering Physics professor.
Working my way through college, I had a friend at work whose wife was a midwife, and they had their children at home. I was captivated by this. Later in med school, doing my OB rotation at the same hospital where I had worked in the kitchen in college, I dared to do my presentation on "Spiritual Midwifery", a book you may well know. The OB/GYN attending/professor was wonderful, intellectually liberal, and was also board-certified in Psychiatry. I have never met anyone else like him. Anyway, he praised my presentation. Not the usual attitude, as you know.
Though I went into Family Practice, including OB, deliveries, and c-sections, I always embodied those same values. Our kids were all home & birth center births, though that was not a service I, myself could offer, except in the hospital birth-center which persisted for some years, but was later eliminated.
I've recently finished and published my own book that amounts to a Gnostic Reformation statement of the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. It has been picked up by a Christian publisher, which gives me some hope that this long supressed counter cosmology may be allowed to peek out of the sack it's been stuck in. I also have just begun a substack to spread this particular gospel message. I hope you check it out.
I think there are limits to our ability to replace our interpretations of this world with the truths of our shared spiritual sociality—the sociality that includes all our relations—at least on this side of eternity. I also think that the goodness of creation extends to and suffuses the natural world—that God is in all things and transcends all things. But I also think that each and all of us—by knowing that we are of creation—participate as unique expressions of everything else in the universe in the whole that is always presencing itself to us at every moment of the now when time touches eternity. As Zhang Zai observed a thousand years ago: “Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst. Therefore that which fills the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.”
You are most welcome! Sharing words that someone finds beauty in is a joy. Here is a post from a friend of mine, Reidun Westvik Lauritzen, that I find beautiful and that speaks to all this from another angle:
Quite frankly I don’t have the patience to read the whole interview. I decided years ago that I am here and now to Do Earth. Answers to the Big Questions will be provided in due course, or I shall be blissfully unaware of their lack. Meanwhile I try to muddle through and be a half decent human being. I mainly chime in here to thank you for your attitude. Why can’t we all agree with people on some issues and disagree on others?
Now can you imagine how long it took me to WRITE this and try to make at least some sense of it?:)) But I loved doing it, it is from love, and doing things from love feels good.
And I agree!!! It shouldn't be that hard to agree to disagree on certain things, especially given that it is the only available option since no one in human history has been convinced in a good way by yelling. Yes, you can trick, you can bully, you can beat somebody on the head into accepting something. But in a way, it is not for real. So, if we are doing things in earnest, agreeing to disagree on certain issues is the only option available in the real world.
You are so right about agreeing to disagree. Freedom of speech is essential for a society. When "right thinking" is mandated and enforced, it is not free thinking. We each must come to our own conclusions after exploring a variety of thoughts. Top-down mandates are usually lies, whether that is in the political, scientific, or religious realms.
It's funny because I use to teach a course on gnosticism at university. I never became a specialist in this field of research but I ended up to be rather familiar with the topic. I did go through all their literature and a quite a few modern secondary scholarly literature related to this topic. At the end of the day I came up with my own theory on gnosticism and Roman antiquity mindset (which would include Christianity also). The early Roman Empire (and even the previous Greek Empire period) was not so dissimilar to ours. A big cosmopolitan structure to some extent with many dislocated persons living in (relatively) big cities.
There was a deep unhappiness shared among urban elites (and within the general population too to a certain extent) that pushed them to cultish groups that were either philosophical (such as neoplatonists) either religious (mysteries) either a bit of both (Christianity etc). Gnostics were radical Christians (formerly radical Jews) with a depressing dualist worldview that they had borrowed from Platonism. The body and physical beings were bad, only the spirit (trapped into matter unfortunately) was good.
The only way for humanity was to give up this life, avoid reproduction at all cost and escaping to a better more spiritual realm.
To me these are all symptoms of a society filled with self-hatred and depression. Not unlike ours again.
Just tried to summarize hours and hours of lecture into a paragraph! Funny me! :-D
Wow Matt, thank you!! This is so interesting. I got the point from Cyd that all material things were bad, and the spirit that bodies are infused with is good. That was my big objection because I think that everything is alive and there is beauty in every atom, and life, and love. Again, words about existential things are highly individual, and God know who means what by what words. But formally, that's what I got. But I didn't realize that there was a notion of avoiding reproduction and getting back to heaven as soon as possible. And yes, your description sounds very similar to what we have today!
Then you stand (like me) at the opposite of the gnosticist spectrum.
Indeed the basic idea of gnosticism (which is drawn from neoplatonism) is that the demiurge (some kind of semi-god) with his pals the "archontes" have created our bodily and material universe and are keeping our spirits as prisoners of this bodily world. Our spirits were somehow stolen from or lost by the real God (who dwells much further up in the cosmos) and our now trapped within matter. To the gnostics this was like the supreme crime.
Hence procreation was the worst crime possible that could be perpetrated because it ment a new soul (that belonged to the real God far above) was now trapped in the lower cosmic realm within a body!
And of course he whole point was escaping this lower realm through asceticism (thus hatred of the body and matter) to climb up the "eons" back to the real God.
If you want we could do a talk one day on late antiquity mindset and gnosticism and such. After all that's what I do normally :-D !
Wow so interesting!! it is phenomenal how the same words mean different things to different people. When I was talking to Cyd, I got a different feel completely, although I did pick up on the story about the creation of this world by an egotistical personality, and the notion that material objects are kaka. But I think because Cyd is a beautiful person, her own version is joy-based and knowledge-based. So interesting!!
And yes, I would love to do a talk. Maybe not immediately because I have already hijacked the usual course of my podcasts with this episode (I wanted to do it, I am happy I did it). But I would love to. do it. Thank you!!!
Your explanation is really helpful, thank you!! I am very excited about learning this bit, previously unknown to me, about the Gnostic preference to avoid reproduction. I makes it so similar to today's sadness and dislike of human existence (assuming people back in the day really felt this way).
And this version you described is in a way similar to the western rendition of Buddhism where the goal is to complete this cycle of rebirths already and depart for good. The indigenous version is much different, and much more joyous to my senses.
PS. I didn't mean the indigenous version of Buddhism, although in Tibetan Buddhism (the only one I am familiar with), the most interesting school to my senses is the one that is the oldest, which means it carries more from Bon.
Hi Matt. The labyrinthine gnosticism you have been teaching was mainly concocted out of the heresiologist's writings, was it not? It's like AOC giving an honest and satisfactory explanation of the conservative position.
The Nag Hammadi is a collection of random teachings, many of which bear no resemblance to each other. I have cherry-picked the scriptures that resonate with me, mainly the Tripartite Tractate that is so underrepresented in Gnostic books and commentaries. It's my belief that this was the original direction of Christianity before it was quashed by the Romans and the pope. If it had been allowed to flourish, centuries of mistaken theology on both the Gnostic and Christian side would have had a countervailing answer. Hence my own quest to initiate a Gnostic Reformation to people who have given up finding a relationship with the originator of consciousness, also known as the God Above All Gods.
I'd love to send you a copy of my book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel of the Tripartite Tractate. I am curious what you would make of it. Please contact me here on substack or through my podcast site: gnosticinsights.com.
My interpretation of gnostic writings is grounded in my historical studies. I'm a historian and an anthropologist. As it happens, it's my job.
Indeed I read and studied the ecclesiastical writers who wrote against gnosticism or simply quoted gnostic writers. Just as I read and studied the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. I also read little known gnostic writings such as the Acts of John for instance. Furthermore I've studied Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato and his disciples (the Neo-Platonists). I also spent a lot of time reading secondary literature on the subject.
It was also important for me to study ancient Christian history and most of the early Christian writers...
To understand ancient authors it is of the utmost importance to place them back in their historical context. By whom were they influenced? To whom did they write? These are the questions I'm struggling with. It is also crucial to read them without any kind of prejudice. Whether negative or positive.
The danger is always to project our own modern ideas on these authors. If we do this, we will only find what suits us...
As for me, I do not have any dogmatic belief regarding the writings considered today as belonging to gnosticism. Bit by bit I came to the conclusions that I hold now.
All the best
PS The Roman pope had nothing to do with the decline of gnosticism which started at the end of the third century when the bishop of Rome was not a yet considered as a "pope"... Besides, the Roman Church as such couldn't do much about Gnosticism since the latter was much more popular in the East. Out of reach thus.
Thank You, Cyd. I am now listening to your first podcast. I am not sure how to obtain your book. Your overall assessment of the removal of the core teachings of Jesus corresponds to mine. Jesus taught freedom through the relationship with "God the Father", whereas the Roman Church "intermediated" itself into this relationship and disconnected it, to redirect humans into the interests of empire.
I should have probably listened to the end before I tapped out my first comment. I could edit the comment but I'll just type another one. I'm with Tessa around the 1 hour point (the 'fall'). I love this world and its people to the core of my being, as it appears Tessa does. I don't know where that love springs from, nor can I put words or definitions to it. I somehow understand the truth of that love and somehow know that such truth is shrouded in deep mystery. I have found that it is in being able to say "I don't know" that I "know"... paradoxically. Things are so incredibly complex. Everyone tries to simplify them... the quest for a unified field theory being part of the current scientific paradigm... but complexity will be present on many levels if such a mathematical construct is ever achieved.
I'll finish with this: 1. If paradox isn't somewhere in the picture, you could be off the mark. 2. After all your efforts, over however many years or decades, give yourself the liberating freedom of sitting back intermittently and saying "I don't know"... really let go of the relentless, desperate effort of trying to understand.... and see what happens. Trust me... you will never stop trying, which is also necessary, but if you exert effort and then release into what is almost an innocence of not knowing... or a relinquishing of your white knuckled grasping at all the information you can find, you might derive some benefit. And next time you look at a flower or a sunset or whatever and just let it exist within the mystery of not knowing... well, without wanting to sound full of euphemistic, new-age bullshit, I'll put it like this: it might be quite good.
Yes, Jane. We only have room to grow when the beliefs we cling to tightly, unthinkingly, obediently, are released. A period of uncertainty leaves us open to new ways of being. This isn't the same as saying that all beliefs are wrong. Love is the upward direction. Onward and upward leads to embracing truth and love.
Hi, I revisited this Substack tonight to break the ice as a topic of conversation with a new acquaintance who is death doula (guide for natural at-home funerals) within the topic of the Amish midwife who was incarcerated. Thanks for the excellent content, as always, Tessa. Your work makes a positive difference in my life.
Good interview as always Tessa. What a complex cosmology/ theology. I could be wrong, but I don't think it's that complicated. That being said, we live on a planet circling a star that's one of a hundred billion of so other stars in our galaxy that's one of a hundred billion or so galaxies, so mysteries abound. Even that factual statement is contested, just ask a flat earther.
I have to admit though, I resist just saying that we're all on a personal spiritual journey with one path being as valid as another as long as it's centered on Love. Even the Davos crowd and others have their spiritual transhumanist cosmology they are inflicting on the world. It's for the good of the world, don't you know. Not to mention the psychopaths it's good for too. I say this because there has to be a power or force that can bring good into the world and fight the demonic forces that are so powerfully prevalent now. We need a unifying theology / cosmology. God is a God of science and of physical laws. Is it so hard to think there are spiritual laws and principles too? Maybe things are at an Apex now, and we will really come to know spiritual Truth and Laws. I banked on having the pearl in the Oyster theology wise, but alas, though I learned and experienced many profound things, it turned out not to be the way I hoped. Even now, I think the world's troubles may be because of that, and I'm not the only one, if that sounds to be self centered.
Jim, your comments bring me a lot of joy. Thank you. I try to choose words carefully when discussing important existential matters because turning the most intimate thing that can be into a set of talking points never leads to good things, and people with not so good intentions exploit it, too. So I will leave it at expressing my uttermost gratitude, love and camaraderie. Thank you!!
Hi Jim. I completely agree with you. I have the termerity to claim I have discovered that pearl of truth that has been long buried. It doesn't comport well with organized, top-down religion, and that's why it has been denigrated for a couple of thousand years. It's a very simple truth, and doesn't resemble the rabbit-trails that most seekers lose themselves in. I'd love for you to read my book and tell me what you think.
My words were absolutely written in love. Bless you, Tessa. I take my guidance from my Lord Jesus, whose revelation is totally unique among the religions on Earth. I acknowledge everyone's right not to hear the Gospel, but I still must speak it. By the way, I love the Russian Orthodox church, though I am a Lutheran myself.
Good to hear from you, Larry. Having a personal relationship with Jesus is experiential--no one who doesn't have this relationship can claim we are imagining it. People who have never entered a relationship with Jesus simply do not buy that such a relationship exists, only because it's experiential and they haven't experienced it. It has nothing to do with church history and the teachings of the pope or the Nicene Council. This "Gnostic Reformation" I am promoting is very much akin to Luther's reformation that challenged the Catholic Church. This reformation also challenges the established conventional Christianity that had so much truth stripped out of it by the Romans and the pope.
I would love for you to read my 270-page book, which explains all of this in depth. Such heresies as universal salvation and the difference between the Father and Jehovah are fully explained. As a long-time Christian, you may actually appreciate this gospel rendition!
This was a wonderful interview. I so relate to the views expressed. Really resonant and comforting to me. Both of your sentiments shared. Thank you so much! Part of it made me think of how I've heard some describe shamanism....path of direct revelation. You just KNOW and it resonates as truth. Seems like a similar path.
This is, as usual, a really thought-provoking stack. As I was reading this song came on my headphones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFGs7HP15d4. I think about what we as a species have to wrestle with before we can effectively throw off this anti-human force, and one of things is belief systems at war, orthodoxy vs heresy. This suffuses every institution, even the supposedly objective ones. Another is our impulse towards subjugation of others. Another is sadism, particularly coupled with power, and the fact that the evolved brain enjoys, and is built for, killing. But belief systems are so freaking intrinsic, and lead to such whackamoleness, like digging people's bones up and burning them for heresy, that I've really been thinking about that. In spirituality, cosmology and theology, ideas and paradigms are also mixed in with embodied experiences, overtly, whereas other paradigms may be covertly or unconsciously based on the experiential. I *know,* for instance, that we are both matter and spirit due to an experience, but no one else has any way of validating or falsifying that experience. The most anyone who knows me well can do is verify that I believe what I'm describing. Here's an interesting take on belief and faith from the Ethical Skeptic https://theethicalskeptic.substack.com/p/what-constitutes-belief. To wrestle these angels is to fight robots so I am grateful for your writing Tessa. Here is a poem for you from the Sufi Muid-ad-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240)
My heart is capable of every form,
A cloister for the monk, a fane for idols,
A pasture for gazells, the votary's Kabah,
The tables of the Torah, the Quran.
Love is the faith I hold.
Wherever turn his camels, still the one true faith is mine. (quoted by Karen Armstrong in Fields of Blood)
The perspecitive of medical lawyer, Nanci Danison, who had an extreme and extremely profound near death experience (or death experience), is well worth listening to. She can be found on YouTube in various talks and interviews she's given. Life is deeply mysterious and has more languages than those our biological natures give rise to.
The longer I live, the more I realize how 'the ground we stand on', i.e. the sum of our own efforts, is vitally important, not least in our human attempts to honour our life and what our particular life represents in the world.
In all of philosophy, it is now my conviction that the most important concepts (which are actually life-long and profoundly nuanced processes) are summed up in the ancient Greek maxim: 'Man know thyself', and, in Polonius' words (Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'),: "This above all: to thine own self be true..."
I don't quote these words lightly or tritely. Quite the opposite. In my experience, they are the most difficult achievements possible, not least because 'To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment' - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The sum of our own efforts is vitally important." I agree completely. Our entire history is a combination of collective choices that people make. And yes, there are many additional complexities but making the best choices we can come up with in each moment is critical, and the only way to make them, I think, is from the deepest love and self-confidence.
Notice your gifts to humanity “the mediator” “exploratory” “teacher” to find answers to feed the courage n strength to overcome
“POSITIVE “
Perhaps science can show a different type of hero’s with the brains structures like amygdala.
60 minutes article Carnegie hero’s and the neuroscience behind acts of heroism date 6/5/22 by Scott Pelly. Article doesn’t mention the female scientist but the 60 minutes “date line” does.
Take/point basic love is healing
The very didn’t goals to heal oneself, others n the world by redifinding thru our journey of life, sometimes jumping from a sinking ship in rough seas, lost n weak n yet each try to swim can be easy listening to others as our floats in our overcoming
Storytelling for warriors
Thank you, you helped me thru your podcast n this article
Wow, I studied the History of Religion in my BA 30 odd years ago. this is all news to me, the Arian thing! So THANK YOU! I have always found it hard to go along with any “organised” view of God and the world. So new ideas are always welcome, to refine my own thinking one way or another.
Hi AJ. You may find my substack podcast and new book interesting. Glad you're not put off by "heresies" that weaken organized religion's grip on people's souls.
It was a difficult interview for me, too. I found myself answering questions out of Tessa's frame of experience and reference. I agree with Tessa that we have different vocabularies for similar ideas. I think my answers were probably more confusing than enlightening or even explanatory as I attempted to address her questions from her frame of reference rather than mine. At my own website and podcast I am able to explain these things much more clearly because I am not standing on the outside looking in, but am rather on the inside, looking out, so my podcasts and articles come from my point of view.
I don't approach gnosticism from a historical perspective but from a conceptual perspective. The Nag Hammadi book that makes most sense to me is the Tripartite Tractate, and those are the concepts I explain in my books and podcast. History is history, and that's fine for people who love history. I am more interested in concepts and truth. The particular gnosticism I teach is Christian Gnosticism, which seems to me to be the true proto-Christian religion, prior to the Popes and the Emperor's meddling.
I agree with Tessa and comments below that human-made institutions generally enforce power and not truth. So, I agree that it is silly to promote celibacy because some ancient manmade "gnostic" institution thought that was the way to go. I don't find that instruction in the Nag Hammadi. Quite the contrary, according to the Tripartite Tractate every shadow that emanated from the Fall needs to be countered by one of us redeemed humans showing it the light. If we are not born, then we can't counter the shadow. It's an esoteric point, but one that demonstrates the silliness of institutional proscriptions.
Thank you, Tessa, for the interview and for including the link to my singing. I appreciate you and I agree that our focus on love promotes an open mind and heart. I think the many months it took you to digest and release this interview and article shows that we both had a difficult time seeing from each other's point of view and yet we largely agree.
Cyd, when I was editing the interview, I could just feel the love of your soul. I thank you from my heart for sharing your sacred and doing the best job despite the difference in our language. And your singing, good Lord, just beautiful.
Also, thank you for being patient about the timing of this article. You could have gotten mad and you didn't, and it speaks of your character.
I am just so happy to have had this conversation, cryptic and convoluted as it was. Many hugs!! And I hope a lot of people get to enjoy your voice! You sing spectacularly!
Thank You, Cyd.
I think you did better than you think you did. I am still listening.
I agree that the vengeful "God" is not the "God of Love", and that Gnosis is the key.
"Original sin" was never a well-founded precept in any way.
I have read "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels, and the Gospel of Thomas, as she explained it. (Good for digging out agricultural phosphate deposits in Nag Hamadi.)
I came to the conclusion that the teachings of Jesus were largely destroyed.
I never rejected the teachings of Jesus, having had gnostic experiences, but I have taken up the Buddhist path for a little over 2 decades, as a path of self-work and work of compassion and love, which I see as the same work.
As I experienced it, Jesus brought me to this path, when I found that his teachings had been destroyed.
It is always difficult to speak overtly about what is experienced personally, because it cannot readily transfer, and is easily misinterpreted, unless the listener has had a very similar experience.
Thank you, John, for bringing your love to the table as well. I am so grateful to the community of good, thinking people here where we are all pitching in our two cents and do it, with very rare exceptions, with the best of intention. My heart is filled with joy and gratitude, in the most authentic way.
Thanks, John. I also felt that the Christian religion did not represent Jesus well, so for decades I have been an unchurched follower of Jesus. I mostly identified with the Tao te Ching, so you and I both took an eastern turn out of conventional Christianity. In 2001 I wrote a theory of everything called A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything that looks at all human endeavour, from science and math to all sorts of religious writing and cultural expression. I distilled from all of these great works a few simple precepts like the Golden Rule and fractal mathematics that appear to apply to everything from the spiritual on through physics and chemistry. People who are spiritual but non-religious seem to like it very much. Years later I read the Tripartite Tractate and it really clicked for me, the same way the Tao te Ching does. The refreshing thing about the Tripartite Tractate is that it appears to be the proto-Christianity of Jesus, prior to the Nicene Council's censorship. As a mature follower of Jesus, I can recognize this book as part of the gospel.
Thanks Cyd (I note your middle name). I am starting to read the Tripartate Tractate http://gnosis.org/naghamm/tripart.htm
I find it very easy to read so far. I always found Carl Jung's work to be internally illuminated for me, also. You might have read The Tao of Physics at some point. I loved physics in college, and would walk across campus in 1976-1977 lost in musings. I always resolved that all truth must agree with all other truth, but I could not find professors interested in that, not even my excellent second-semester Engineering Physics professor.
Working my way through college, I had a friend at work whose wife was a midwife, and they had their children at home. I was captivated by this. Later in med school, doing my OB rotation at the same hospital where I had worked in the kitchen in college, I dared to do my presentation on "Spiritual Midwifery", a book you may well know. The OB/GYN attending/professor was wonderful, intellectually liberal, and was also board-certified in Psychiatry. I have never met anyone else like him. Anyway, he praised my presentation. Not the usual attitude, as you know.
Though I went into Family Practice, including OB, deliveries, and c-sections, I always embodied those same values. Our kids were all home & birth center births, though that was not a service I, myself could offer, except in the hospital birth-center which persisted for some years, but was later eliminated.
Hello John.
I've recently finished and published my own book that amounts to a Gnostic Reformation statement of the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. It has been picked up by a Christian publisher, which gives me some hope that this long supressed counter cosmology may be allowed to peek out of the sack it's been stuck in. I also have just begun a substack to spread this particular gospel message. I hope you check it out.
I think there are limits to our ability to replace our interpretations of this world with the truths of our shared spiritual sociality—the sociality that includes all our relations—at least on this side of eternity. I also think that the goodness of creation extends to and suffuses the natural world—that God is in all things and transcends all things. But I also think that each and all of us—by knowing that we are of creation—participate as unique expressions of everything else in the universe in the whole that is always presencing itself to us at every moment of the now when time touches eternity. As Zhang Zai observed a thousand years ago: “Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst. Therefore that which fills the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.”
Thank you for your words. I find them beautiful.
You are most welcome! Sharing words that someone finds beauty in is a joy. Here is a post from a friend of mine, Reidun Westvik Lauritzen, that I find beautiful and that speaks to all this from another angle:
IT IS TIME
We cannot fix the planet.
We cannot save the oceans.
We can only allow nature to reveal
its own innate intelligence,
logic, interconnections
and regenerative cycles,
teaching us how to
respect it as ourselves.
We are nature.
There is nothing to fix.
There is only tuning into our own nature,
systems, emotions, energy,
our common path.
By doing this,
we open up the door into our
renewed collective imaginary,
experiencing it as
freedom, thrivability and belonging.
It starts in this moment.
Not with heroes.
But with us.
You and I regenerating our own hearts,
enabling ourselves to
hold space
for friction, old and new,
the power structures falling apart,
and the emergence
of the new self
on an individual, relational, collective
and planetary level.
The regeneration is already
mirroring itself
through all the layers
of the earth, our souls and purposes.
Invite yourself to join.
Welcome ✨
#reconnection #regeneration #resilience
#wearenature #oneness #expansion #biodiversity #metastudies #sensingbeings #flow #awe #AI #feedbackloops #nestedselfsufficiency #floatingfuture
Reidun Westvik Lauritzen
Soulside Regenerative Art 2020
Thank you for this as well!!
Thank you Steven, expressed inspirationally!
That works for me!
Quite frankly I don’t have the patience to read the whole interview. I decided years ago that I am here and now to Do Earth. Answers to the Big Questions will be provided in due course, or I shall be blissfully unaware of their lack. Meanwhile I try to muddle through and be a half decent human being. I mainly chime in here to thank you for your attitude. Why can’t we all agree with people on some issues and disagree on others?
Happy robot fighting.
Thank you, Ieneke!!
Now can you imagine how long it took me to WRITE this and try to make at least some sense of it?:)) But I loved doing it, it is from love, and doing things from love feels good.
And I agree!!! It shouldn't be that hard to agree to disagree on certain things, especially given that it is the only available option since no one in human history has been convinced in a good way by yelling. Yes, you can trick, you can bully, you can beat somebody on the head into accepting something. But in a way, it is not for real. So, if we are doing things in earnest, agreeing to disagree on certain issues is the only option available in the real world.
You are so right about agreeing to disagree. Freedom of speech is essential for a society. When "right thinking" is mandated and enforced, it is not free thinking. We each must come to our own conclusions after exploring a variety of thoughts. Top-down mandates are usually lies, whether that is in the political, scientific, or religious realms.
It's funny because I use to teach a course on gnosticism at university. I never became a specialist in this field of research but I ended up to be rather familiar with the topic. I did go through all their literature and a quite a few modern secondary scholarly literature related to this topic. At the end of the day I came up with my own theory on gnosticism and Roman antiquity mindset (which would include Christianity also). The early Roman Empire (and even the previous Greek Empire period) was not so dissimilar to ours. A big cosmopolitan structure to some extent with many dislocated persons living in (relatively) big cities.
There was a deep unhappiness shared among urban elites (and within the general population too to a certain extent) that pushed them to cultish groups that were either philosophical (such as neoplatonists) either religious (mysteries) either a bit of both (Christianity etc). Gnostics were radical Christians (formerly radical Jews) with a depressing dualist worldview that they had borrowed from Platonism. The body and physical beings were bad, only the spirit (trapped into matter unfortunately) was good.
The only way for humanity was to give up this life, avoid reproduction at all cost and escaping to a better more spiritual realm.
To me these are all symptoms of a society filled with self-hatred and depression. Not unlike ours again.
Just tried to summarize hours and hours of lecture into a paragraph! Funny me! :-D
Wow Matt, thank you!! This is so interesting. I got the point from Cyd that all material things were bad, and the spirit that bodies are infused with is good. That was my big objection because I think that everything is alive and there is beauty in every atom, and life, and love. Again, words about existential things are highly individual, and God know who means what by what words. But formally, that's what I got. But I didn't realize that there was a notion of avoiding reproduction and getting back to heaven as soon as possible. And yes, your description sounds very similar to what we have today!
Then you stand (like me) at the opposite of the gnosticist spectrum.
Indeed the basic idea of gnosticism (which is drawn from neoplatonism) is that the demiurge (some kind of semi-god) with his pals the "archontes" have created our bodily and material universe and are keeping our spirits as prisoners of this bodily world. Our spirits were somehow stolen from or lost by the real God (who dwells much further up in the cosmos) and our now trapped within matter. To the gnostics this was like the supreme crime.
Hence procreation was the worst crime possible that could be perpetrated because it ment a new soul (that belonged to the real God far above) was now trapped in the lower cosmic realm within a body!
And of course he whole point was escaping this lower realm through asceticism (thus hatred of the body and matter) to climb up the "eons" back to the real God.
If you want we could do a talk one day on late antiquity mindset and gnosticism and such. After all that's what I do normally :-D !
Wow so interesting!! it is phenomenal how the same words mean different things to different people. When I was talking to Cyd, I got a different feel completely, although I did pick up on the story about the creation of this world by an egotistical personality, and the notion that material objects are kaka. But I think because Cyd is a beautiful person, her own version is joy-based and knowledge-based. So interesting!!
And yes, I would love to do a talk. Maybe not immediately because I have already hijacked the usual course of my podcasts with this episode (I wanted to do it, I am happy I did it). But I would love to. do it. Thank you!!!
Your explanation is really helpful, thank you!! I am very excited about learning this bit, previously unknown to me, about the Gnostic preference to avoid reproduction. I makes it so similar to today's sadness and dislike of human existence (assuming people back in the day really felt this way).
Absolutely. I feel that way too. The two are very similar if not identical.
As for me this hatred of procreation is very telling. Like a symptom.
There is a lot of self-hatred in the western world. Not only. And not at all the time during its history. But it is there. There is love too however.
There is absolutely no hurry. We could have this talk whenever it suits you. My scholarly life is very adjustable.
Thank you, Matt!! Exciting. :)
And this version you described is in a way similar to the western rendition of Buddhism where the goal is to complete this cycle of rebirths already and depart for good. The indigenous version is much different, and much more joyous to my senses.
PS. I didn't mean the indigenous version of Buddhism, although in Tibetan Buddhism (the only one I am familiar with), the most interesting school to my senses is the one that is the oldest, which means it carries more from Bon.
Hi Matt. The labyrinthine gnosticism you have been teaching was mainly concocted out of the heresiologist's writings, was it not? It's like AOC giving an honest and satisfactory explanation of the conservative position.
The Nag Hammadi is a collection of random teachings, many of which bear no resemblance to each other. I have cherry-picked the scriptures that resonate with me, mainly the Tripartite Tractate that is so underrepresented in Gnostic books and commentaries. It's my belief that this was the original direction of Christianity before it was quashed by the Romans and the pope. If it had been allowed to flourish, centuries of mistaken theology on both the Gnostic and Christian side would have had a countervailing answer. Hence my own quest to initiate a Gnostic Reformation to people who have given up finding a relationship with the originator of consciousness, also known as the God Above All Gods.
I'd love to send you a copy of my book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel of the Tripartite Tractate. I am curious what you would make of it. Please contact me here on substack or through my podcast site: gnosticinsights.com.
Dear Cyd,
My interpretation of gnostic writings is grounded in my historical studies. I'm a historian and an anthropologist. As it happens, it's my job.
Indeed I read and studied the ecclesiastical writers who wrote against gnosticism or simply quoted gnostic writers. Just as I read and studied the Nag Hammadi manuscripts. I also read little known gnostic writings such as the Acts of John for instance. Furthermore I've studied Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato and his disciples (the Neo-Platonists). I also spent a lot of time reading secondary literature on the subject.
It was also important for me to study ancient Christian history and most of the early Christian writers...
To understand ancient authors it is of the utmost importance to place them back in their historical context. By whom were they influenced? To whom did they write? These are the questions I'm struggling with. It is also crucial to read them without any kind of prejudice. Whether negative or positive.
The danger is always to project our own modern ideas on these authors. If we do this, we will only find what suits us...
As for me, I do not have any dogmatic belief regarding the writings considered today as belonging to gnosticism. Bit by bit I came to the conclusions that I hold now.
All the best
PS The Roman pope had nothing to do with the decline of gnosticism which started at the end of the third century when the bishop of Rome was not a yet considered as a "pope"... Besides, the Roman Church as such couldn't do much about Gnosticism since the latter was much more popular in the East. Out of reach thus.
Thank You, Cyd. I am now listening to your first podcast. I am not sure how to obtain your book. Your overall assessment of the removal of the core teachings of Jesus corresponds to mine. Jesus taught freedom through the relationship with "God the Father", whereas the Roman Church "intermediated" itself into this relationship and disconnected it, to redirect humans into the interests of empire.
I should have probably listened to the end before I tapped out my first comment. I could edit the comment but I'll just type another one. I'm with Tessa around the 1 hour point (the 'fall'). I love this world and its people to the core of my being, as it appears Tessa does. I don't know where that love springs from, nor can I put words or definitions to it. I somehow understand the truth of that love and somehow know that such truth is shrouded in deep mystery. I have found that it is in being able to say "I don't know" that I "know"... paradoxically. Things are so incredibly complex. Everyone tries to simplify them... the quest for a unified field theory being part of the current scientific paradigm... but complexity will be present on many levels if such a mathematical construct is ever achieved.
I'll finish with this: 1. If paradox isn't somewhere in the picture, you could be off the mark. 2. After all your efforts, over however many years or decades, give yourself the liberating freedom of sitting back intermittently and saying "I don't know"... really let go of the relentless, desperate effort of trying to understand.... and see what happens. Trust me... you will never stop trying, which is also necessary, but if you exert effort and then release into what is almost an innocence of not knowing... or a relinquishing of your white knuckled grasping at all the information you can find, you might derive some benefit. And next time you look at a flower or a sunset or whatever and just let it exist within the mystery of not knowing... well, without wanting to sound full of euphemistic, new-age bullshit, I'll put it like this: it might be quite good.
Yes, Jane. We only have room to grow when the beliefs we cling to tightly, unthinkingly, obediently, are released. A period of uncertainty leaves us open to new ways of being. This isn't the same as saying that all beliefs are wrong. Love is the upward direction. Onward and upward leads to embracing truth and love.
The system wishes for no competition...expressly because it puts them in a bad light more often than not.
Rather than learn from others...their standard chosen course is domination.
I agree. If you have not seen Steven Newcomb's work, here is an interview with him from last year. His entire work is about the system of domination. https://tessa.substack.com/p/great-reset-doctrine-domination
Steve Newcomb’s work has been a major influence on my forthcoming book: https://ethicspress.com/products/arguments-over-genocide
Oh, that's wonderful! I am checking out your book right now.
It will be published in April and is very expensive. Send me an email and I’ll send you a pdf of the manuscript. steven.schwartzberg@gmail.com
Thank you, it is so generous of you, Steven! I will email you.
Hi, I revisited this Substack tonight to break the ice as a topic of conversation with a new acquaintance who is death doula (guide for natural at-home funerals) within the topic of the Amish midwife who was incarcerated. Thanks for the excellent content, as always, Tessa. Your work makes a positive difference in my life.
Good interview as always Tessa. What a complex cosmology/ theology. I could be wrong, but I don't think it's that complicated. That being said, we live on a planet circling a star that's one of a hundred billion of so other stars in our galaxy that's one of a hundred billion or so galaxies, so mysteries abound. Even that factual statement is contested, just ask a flat earther.
I have to admit though, I resist just saying that we're all on a personal spiritual journey with one path being as valid as another as long as it's centered on Love. Even the Davos crowd and others have their spiritual transhumanist cosmology they are inflicting on the world. It's for the good of the world, don't you know. Not to mention the psychopaths it's good for too. I say this because there has to be a power or force that can bring good into the world and fight the demonic forces that are so powerfully prevalent now. We need a unifying theology / cosmology. God is a God of science and of physical laws. Is it so hard to think there are spiritual laws and principles too? Maybe things are at an Apex now, and we will really come to know spiritual Truth and Laws. I banked on having the pearl in the Oyster theology wise, but alas, though I learned and experienced many profound things, it turned out not to be the way I hoped. Even now, I think the world's troubles may be because of that, and I'm not the only one, if that sounds to be self centered.
Jim, your comments bring me a lot of joy. Thank you. I try to choose words carefully when discussing important existential matters because turning the most intimate thing that can be into a set of talking points never leads to good things, and people with not so good intentions exploit it, too. So I will leave it at expressing my uttermost gratitude, love and camaraderie. Thank you!!
Hi Jim. I completely agree with you. I have the termerity to claim I have discovered that pearl of truth that has been long buried. It doesn't comport well with organized, top-down religion, and that's why it has been denigrated for a couple of thousand years. It's a very simple truth, and doesn't resemble the rabbit-trails that most seekers lose themselves in. I'd love for you to read my book and tell me what you think.
love, cyd
My words were absolutely written in love. Bless you, Tessa. I take my guidance from my Lord Jesus, whose revelation is totally unique among the religions on Earth. I acknowledge everyone's right not to hear the Gospel, but I still must speak it. By the way, I love the Russian Orthodox church, though I am a Lutheran myself.
Good to hear from you, Larry. Having a personal relationship with Jesus is experiential--no one who doesn't have this relationship can claim we are imagining it. People who have never entered a relationship with Jesus simply do not buy that such a relationship exists, only because it's experiential and they haven't experienced it. It has nothing to do with church history and the teachings of the pope or the Nicene Council. This "Gnostic Reformation" I am promoting is very much akin to Luther's reformation that challenged the Catholic Church. This reformation also challenges the established conventional Christianity that had so much truth stripped out of it by the Romans and the pope.
I would love for you to read my 270-page book, which explains all of this in depth. Such heresies as universal salvation and the difference between the Father and Jehovah are fully explained. As a long-time Christian, you may actually appreciate this gospel rendition!
This was a wonderful interview. I so relate to the views expressed. Really resonant and comforting to me. Both of your sentiments shared. Thank you so much! Part of it made me think of how I've heard some describe shamanism....path of direct revelation. You just KNOW and it resonates as truth. Seems like a similar path.
Thank you, Kelly!! I am very happy to hear that you liked it!
This is, as usual, a really thought-provoking stack. As I was reading this song came on my headphones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFGs7HP15d4. I think about what we as a species have to wrestle with before we can effectively throw off this anti-human force, and one of things is belief systems at war, orthodoxy vs heresy. This suffuses every institution, even the supposedly objective ones. Another is our impulse towards subjugation of others. Another is sadism, particularly coupled with power, and the fact that the evolved brain enjoys, and is built for, killing. But belief systems are so freaking intrinsic, and lead to such whackamoleness, like digging people's bones up and burning them for heresy, that I've really been thinking about that. In spirituality, cosmology and theology, ideas and paradigms are also mixed in with embodied experiences, overtly, whereas other paradigms may be covertly or unconsciously based on the experiential. I *know,* for instance, that we are both matter and spirit due to an experience, but no one else has any way of validating or falsifying that experience. The most anyone who knows me well can do is verify that I believe what I'm describing. Here's an interesting take on belief and faith from the Ethical Skeptic https://theethicalskeptic.substack.com/p/what-constitutes-belief. To wrestle these angels is to fight robots so I am grateful for your writing Tessa. Here is a poem for you from the Sufi Muid-ad-Din ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240)
My heart is capable of every form,
A cloister for the monk, a fane for idols,
A pasture for gazells, the votary's Kabah,
The tables of the Torah, the Quran.
Love is the faith I hold.
Wherever turn his camels, still the one true faith is mine. (quoted by Karen Armstrong in Fields of Blood)
Thank you Cynthia!! Hugs to you!!
Couldn't agree with you more, Cynthia!
The perspecitive of medical lawyer, Nanci Danison, who had an extreme and extremely profound near death experience (or death experience), is well worth listening to. She can be found on YouTube in various talks and interviews she's given. Life is deeply mysterious and has more languages than those our biological natures give rise to.
The longer I live, the more I realize how 'the ground we stand on', i.e. the sum of our own efforts, is vitally important, not least in our human attempts to honour our life and what our particular life represents in the world.
In all of philosophy, it is now my conviction that the most important concepts (which are actually life-long and profoundly nuanced processes) are summed up in the ancient Greek maxim: 'Man know thyself', and, in Polonius' words (Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'),: "This above all: to thine own self be true..."
I don't quote these words lightly or tritely. Quite the opposite. In my experience, they are the most difficult achievements possible, not least because 'To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment' - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The sum of our own efforts is vitally important." I agree completely. Our entire history is a combination of collective choices that people make. And yes, there are many additional complexities but making the best choices we can come up with in each moment is critical, and the only way to make them, I think, is from the deepest love and self-confidence.
Absolutely!
Notice your gifts to humanity “the mediator” “exploratory” “teacher” to find answers to feed the courage n strength to overcome
“POSITIVE “
Perhaps science can show a different type of hero’s with the brains structures like amygdala.
60 minutes article Carnegie hero’s and the neuroscience behind acts of heroism date 6/5/22 by Scott Pelly. Article doesn’t mention the female scientist but the 60 minutes “date line” does.
Take/point basic love is healing
The very didn’t goals to heal oneself, others n the world by redifinding thru our journey of life, sometimes jumping from a sinking ship in rough seas, lost n weak n yet each try to swim can be easy listening to others as our floats in our overcoming
Storytelling for warriors
Thank you, you helped me thru your podcast n this article
Keep healing n others
Wow, I studied the History of Religion in my BA 30 odd years ago. this is all news to me, the Arian thing! So THANK YOU! I have always found it hard to go along with any “organised” view of God and the world. So new ideas are always welcome, to refine my own thinking one way or another.
Thank you, AJ! I didn't know about it, either, until I started reading (superficially, at that) about the Nicaean Council.
Hi AJ. You may find my substack podcast and new book interesting. Glad you're not put off by "heresies" that weaken organized religion's grip on people's souls.
"i have an objection to source code!" ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSdrwqLUpD0
:)) And now I want to know what happened next in that movie! Did the young man survive inside the bag?
see the movie if you can find it, i looked everywhere for a stream....one of my alltime favorites
It does look like a riot, and I have already read the "plot" out of concern for the character. :)) I will look for it!
I checked out Cyd's youtube. That was nice of you to post it. She has some wonderful videos on there.
While I live a world away in many regards...it is refreshing to have a sense of being connected.
Thanks Tessa.
You are welcome, Guy!! And yes, she has such a beautiful voice. Just beautiful.