Defining Gnosis and Anamnesis

When I first conceived of my theory of everything named “A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything” back in 2008, I was unfamiliar with Gnosticism. A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything is presented in secular terms, using common concepts from all fields of human endeavor from math and science on through religion, psychology, and sociology. In A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, God is usually referred to as Metaversal Consciousness, and we here on this plane carry that consciousness forward into this life as Units of Consciousness. A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything was written to appeal to folks who usually don’t go in for religion but who, nonetheless, are seeking an overall structure for understanding the mysteries of life.

I updated A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything in 2020 to make it smaller and converted the color images to black and white to make it less expensive to purchase. The 2020 edition is also available in kindle and audible.

Had I been a philosophy major like my brother, Dr. Bill Puett, I would have known the names for various aspects of the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, like panpsychism and monadism. I would have been familiar with works such as Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy. But I wasn’t a philosophy major. I am instead a psychologist with a Ph.D. in Classical Rhetoric. My field of deep study is ancient texts and ideologies, and these are what influenced the development of my theory, not modern philosophers such as Leibniz or Kant. So rather than kludge together other people’s ideas, which is the normal way that scholars work, I built the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything from the ground up using my own observation and logic.

And then around 2016, I read a copy of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures. At first I found the ideas shocking. These were the very heresies my conservative Christianity had warned me away from. According to Christians, these beliefs were excluded from our modern versions of the Bible to protect the church from theological misinformation. I discovered that radical repackaging had removed from the New Testament a type of spiritual belief that was well- known to Jesus and his followers. This belief system, commonly called Gnosticism, describes Christianity differently than does our modern Church. Gnosticism makes sense of most of the more mysterious aspects of Christianity, including humanity’s role in the great scheme of things, and common questions such as “why is there evil in the world?”

Many of these answers to longstanding theological problems were resurrected along with the Nag Hammadi scriptures when they were rediscovered and exhumed from the desert sands in 1945. I learned that the Nag Hammadi scriptures had been buried deep in the Egyptian desert around 350 AD, preserving them from the great Biblical purge conducted by the Council of Nicene at the behest of the Catholic Pope and the Emperor of Rome as they shaped and packaged Christianity to suit their needs. Keep in mind that these ancient teachings have been held back from almost 2000 years of formal study and Christian theology. So what you are about to learn from the Nag Hammadi scriptures is fresh, clean, and unsullied by centuries of scholastic and theological opinions.

Over the next couple of years I carefully picked up the Nag Hammadi and I set it back down numerous times, lest I be led astray by false beliefs. Eventually I narrowed my focus to one of the codices in particular that seemed to accord most closely with my understanding of the teachings of Jesus. This book is called The Tripartite Tractate, which simply means the 3-part book. The “3” also refers to the 3-part nature of humanity: spiritual, psychological, and material.

I spent time conducting a word study on the Tripartite Tractate, attempting to nail down some very confusing, archaic language. I also made diagrams and illustrations of the ideas presented in the book as I read. Then I put the material away for another year to let it rest and percolate. Finally, in 2019, I wrote and published a small book called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, based upon the Tripartite Tractate.

The purpose of The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated is to present the gnosis of the Tripartite Tractate as simply and clearly as possible. The format of the Gnostic Gospel book is similar to the Chick cartoon tracts I used to hand out during my Jesus-freak days in the late 1960s. Each concept in the Gnostic Gospel is illustrated by my own original artwork that converts difficult ideas from the Tripartite Tractate into easy-to-understand drawings. With my simple Gnostic Gospel, anyone, of any level of education, can grasp Gnostic theology.

Since that time, I have continued to develop the Gnostic theology as presented in the Tripartite Tractate through my Gnostic Insights podcast. I have also had the pleasure of presenting this Gnostic theology as a guest on numerous podcasts hosted by others. The book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, represents the current state of my personal gnosis within the context of a fully developed Gnostic theology. Although The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated presents everything one needs to know to remember the gnosis they were born with, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel goes beyond The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated to explain, as simply as humanly possible, the why’s and wherefores of gnosis.

Before we go any further let’s answer the question: what is gnosis? We keep talking about gnosis and Gnosticism, but what does this mean? Gnosis simply means knowing. And in the gnostic frame of reference, gnosis refers to remembering the truth of our existence and our origin. Gnostic literature says we come into life holding all of this knowledge within ourselves and we have complete access to the Father, the Son, and the Fullness at any time that we turn our focus upward. It is this direct conduit to the Father that brings us into alignment with our gnosis.

Gnosis is a Greek word. Another word related to gnosis is anamnesis. You know that the word amnesia means forgetting. Anamnesis means not forgetting. So the process of coming to gnosis is a process called anamnesis—or remembering. Just to let you know, this book sometimes throws around big words like anamnesis. Not to worry though, because the goal here is to explain these words clearly enough so you will be able to understand them without running to the dictionary.

Many people claim that it is impossible to know or describe the full glory of the transcendent, immortal Father due to our own human limitations. After all, 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, the book of the Nag Hamadi that I use as my primary source material, 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 the impossibility of his creation comprehending himself and so the Father built a helpful workaround meant to aid comprehension through selfless union and cooperation with others in a shared task.

“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.”

We will learn all about the Father, the Son, and the ALL in the order that Creation itself came from the Father. I like to begin with the cosmos as it unfolded and rolled out. The word for that sort of study is “cosmogony,” which is the study of the origins of the universe. This makes the most sense to me–to start at the very beginning and then to go through the entire process of how everything came to be and who the principle players are and then, after that is established, to see how that applies to our lives. Then we can ask, “Why are we here? Is there a purpose to our lives? How should we live?” After that, we can finally consider the final roll-up of the universe and what happens after we die. All of these questions are answered very precisely in the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. This knowledge is “gnosis.”

Valentinian Gnosticism is a form of Christianity, and I maintain that it is the true form of Christianity that Christianity should be. It is my understanding that this wisdom would have been what Jesus was actually talking about, and that’s why the New Testament is consistent with what I have been teaching. When Jesus said, “I and my Father are One,” he was talking about the gnostic God Above All Gods. So you are not wandering into deep heresy by exploring Valentinian Gnosticism. However, if you are a Christian, you should know that there are indeed a couple of major heresies in Gnosticism.

One major heresy, and this is a big heresy, is that that the Creator God of this universe that we’ve been calling Jehovah or Yaweh is not the God Above All Gods. Yes, Jehovah is the creator of the heavens and earth. But his creation only extends to the mineral level. Basically, Jehovah is in charge of all the material in the universe. Jehovah makes our material universe hold its shape and appear solid. So, yes, Jehovah as the Creator God of our material universe is in line with Christianity. But Gnosticism then goes on to say that the creator of this universe is not the Father, but a fallen entity. The Creator God is an Aeon who fell from the Fullness of God. In the Tripartite Tractate the Aeon who fell is named Logos.

Another big heresy in gnostic Christianity is the notion that everyone will be redeemed. As our Christian New Testament repeatedly says, redemption is not based upon merit or works. It is not based upon rituals such as baptism and communion . Redemption is based upon the fact that Christ came to Earth and it was the Christ’s job to redeem us all, not ours. So it doesn’t matter what you think about Christ. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in redemption or not, because your beliefs and actions do not limit the ability of Christ to accomplish his mission.

I don’t see universal redemption as the negative heresy it is made out to be. I actually find it empowers the role of Christ more than our modern church doctrine. It makes Jesus even more important because everyone is redeemed. Everyone who ever was, everyone who lives now, and everyone who will ever be is covered by the redemption of Christ, because it is Christ’s job to do that and the Christ accomplished his job. This fact is actually stated throughout the New Testament, although generally misinterpreted.

It doesn’t matter whether you hold out as an atheist. The thing is, when you do hold out, when you refuse to acknowledge the mission of the Christ, then it’s a pretty good indication that you are not in tune with the Father, because the Christ is the emissary of the Father. So if you reject the redemption of the Christ, you are rejecting the Father. If you love the Father, then you will love the Son. And if you love the Son, you will love the Christ. Sounds pretty Christian to me.

Valentinian Gnosticism is most assuredly not a New Age religion. The books of the Nag Hammadi were written on sheepskin parchment and buried in a clay jar in the desert for 2000 years, so I don’t see how you could call it “New Age.” If Valentinian Gnosticism has tenets in common with other popular belief systems, then those would be truths that they all happen to share. That is, the gnosis they may have in common doesn’t imply they are historically related to each other.

For example, my book–The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated—comes from the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi. My retelling of the mythos is just good news for modern man. It is not hermetic; it is not a translation of wisdom from an Egyptian God. It is not New Age. This Gnostic Gospel is simply the story of who we are and where we come from. This is the information A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel will explain as thoroughly and as simply as possible. The gnosis I am sharing in this book honors God the Father and, as you begin to remember this inherent truth, you will experience a more joyful life. When we use our free will to remember our true inheritance, the God of this universe loses its power to control us. When we turn our eyes upward to the Father, we are freed from the burdens of this world.

Once you begin to remember that you are truly loved by our heavenly Father, you will suffer less. When you begin to walk with virtue rather than embracing vice, you will be happier; you will be joyful. Not all of the time. Bad things do happen. But suffering as a response to life’s challenges is unnecessary. We are living in a fallen world, and that, I suppose, is another gnostic heresy. For some reason, modern Christians want to insist that this world is blessed by God and is blessedly perfect. But we all know this world we live in isn’t perfect, and when you deny that fact you become unduly frustrated and sad , even to the point of depression. Pharmaceuticals are not the solution; gnosis is.

One last thing before we leave this introduction. A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel is not a scholarly, theological tome. Gnosis means knowing. This sort of knowing is not related to book learning. Gnosis refers to remembering what you already know–anamnesis. The point of spiritual study is not to learn new things but to mine what you already possess deep inside of you. When you study new ideas, you must continually weigh the information you are taking in against your own discernment. The purpose of this book is not so much to teach you about Gnosticism; the purpose of this book is to stimulate your own innate gnosis. And there is really only one gnosis that matters in the end, and that is remembering your cosmic origin and the purpose of being alive.

Are you familiar with that expression that says, “You can’t take it with you”? You can’t take it with you usually means that your possessions and your money are worthless to you after you die. People say, “You may as well spend what you have now rather than hoard it, because you can’t take it with you,” or, “You should be more generous with your possessions and share them with others, because you can’t take it with you.” But aside from money and possessions, another thing you can’t take with you is worldly knowledge and book learning.

The memes that you pick up here in our material cosmos will not follow you into the afterlife. The only memes that will persist beyond this place and time are those that are compatible with the values of the Pleroma, often referred to as virtues. So you can be a billionaire here in this life, you could be a tech giant and shoot off your own rockets to Mars, you could be President of the United States or the head of a crime syndicate, but you won’t have a dime in Heaven.

Likewise, you can have three Ivy League degrees but learn nothing of lasting value. Your advanced degrees in religious studies or in physics or archeology are ultimately worthless. The only knowledge of lasting value is the gnosis that transcends this material cosmos. This is the type of knowledge we address in this book: gnosis of the Father and the Son, gnosis of the Pleroma and the Aeons, gnosis of the fall and how to avoid partaking in the fall, gnosis of redemption from the fall, gnosis of the mission of the Christ, and gnosis of the Simple Golden Rule of love and cooperation.

More than book learning, what we really need to learn is discernment. Our culture does not promote either critical thinking or discernment. Our culture actually promotes going along to get along. Our culture teaches us to feed our narcissistic egos and denies that we exist beyond our egos. Science officially denies the existence of souls because souls cannot be dissected, weighed, or measured, and science only believes in tangible evidence they can squeeze out of their experiments. You can’t tease out a soul in an atom smasher.

But here’s what I’d like to tell you today: that the academy of scholars don’t know much of anything of lasting value. This is because academia only studies “isms” and not gnosis. Academic publications are, for the most part, empty of any sort of gnosis or spiritual discernment. University scholasticism, another ism, scours the writings of other scholars and builds upon officially pre-approved conclusions. This is why the footnotes and the reference sections are so important, because they disclose the limits of the scholar’s inquiry.

These scholars are not mining the actual source of knowledge. Rather, they are continually adding and stripping wallpaper from the walls of academia and painting over other people’s decor in the name of intellectual progress. But it’s not progress; it’s only an accumulation of essentially useless information.

We have no need of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Knowledge should be used to inform your own gnosis. Knowledge should be weighed by the scales of your own discernment. The purpose of reading, writing, and arithmetic is to aid your own recall of gnosis. The purpose of scholarship, if you want to be a gnostic scholar, is to enhance your practice of gnosis. It is far better to be a gnostic practitioner with little formal education than to be a scholar with little or no gnosis. So go ahead and study, but realize that the study has no value unless it helps you to realize truth, and the only truth you need is Aeonic truth. The vast majority of memes do not lead us to truth. Most memes are forms of delusion, whether you pick them up from worldly culture or soulless universities. Most memes stand between you and your realization of self.

In academia, consciousness is largely denied. Some academics go so far as to claim that apparent consciousness is nothing but random nodes in a mathematical abstraction, and that what we think of as ourselves is only packets of information that arise from calculations. Those researchers who are into consciousness studies believe themselves to be at the forefront of uncovering the nature of consciousness through scientific procedure. They are attempting to discover the true nature of consciousness through reductionism and measurements.

The consciousness studies articles I have read attempt to reduce consciousness rather than expand it. They believe consciousness can be grasped by going tinier and tinier. That’s called scientific reductionism. It reduces the big to the tiny. A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel is the opposite of reductionism. We keep going larger and larger, all the way up to the gigantic, to the immeasurable, to the level of the Aeons, the Pleroma, the Son, the Christ, and the Father. That’s the opposite direction of reductionism. It’s going large.

So hang onto your hats and let’s get ready to mine some very big gnosis.

You may purchase my original book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated at gnosticinsights.com. It is also available as a pocket edition from lulu.com for only $7.

You may purchase A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel at amazon or even your local independent book store; just ask them to order it for you. It is listed in the Ingram catalog. It is also available in kindle and audible, narrated by Aeon Byte’s Miguel Conner.

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