My brother, Bill, and I had a good long talk the other day concerning what humans refer to as “death,” and its connection to the apparent material nature of the universe. Here’s the upshot of that conversation.



If you visit my gnostic websites or have bought your copy of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, you’ve seen my diagrams many times by now. Perhaps you remember that my own gnosis was unlocked through several years of contemplation on the simple phrase: “mud up, spirit down.” That little ditty eventually turned into these two diagrams:



Mud Up



Spirit Down



These two diagrams blossomed out into my theory of everything that I call A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, which you can read on the simple explanation blog or in the book, A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. It has proven to be a robust theory of everything that continues to hold up.



Later, my own search for gnosis led me into the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi codices. I find the logical cosmology of the Tripartite Tractate to be the one that resonates with me, unlike the Sethian codices which have their gnosis packaged within an old-school type of mythology not unlike the complex, personified mythologies of other cultures and religions. Yet, if we stand back and take the long view of both Valentinian and Sethian gnostic belief, they have many overlapping features. This leads me to surmise that it is the Big Picture flow of consciousness unfolding, outflowing, and then re-enfolding that is the gnostic takeaway, not the particulars of the mythologies.



Whether we call it The Father in Christian gnosticism or The Source or Virgin Spirit in Sethian gnosticism, the matrix of all existence is ethereal consciousness itself—the originating consciousness that we and all sentient beings are heirs to. And whether you call the consciousness that flowed out of the originating Source the Son or the Sethian’s androgynous Barbelo—it is still the first and only monad produced by the originating consciousness.




But since he is as he is, he is a spring, which is not diminished by the water which abundantly flows from it. (Tripartite Tractate, verse 60)




Then that singular representation of consciousness fanned out into all possible variables of that consciousness—all that was, all that would ever be: the ALL and Fullness of God in the Tripartite Tractate and the Child in Sethian codices such as the Secret Book of John, culminating in an eventual separation called the Fall.




Just as the Father exists in the proper sense, the one before whom there was no one else and the one apart from whom there is no other unbegotten one, so too the Son exists in the proper sense, the one before whom there was no other, and after whom no other son exists... Furthermore, he has his fruit, that which is unknowable because of its surpassing greatness. Yet he wanted it to be known, because of the riches of his sweetness... (TTT, verse 57)




Then that singular representation of consciousness fanned out into all possible variables of that consciousness—all that was, all that would ever be: the ALL and Fullness of God in the ...