Gnostic Insights Units of Consciousness, Free Will, and the Cosmic Simulation
We’re talking this week about what I call units of consciousness. Consciousness is a big topic. Let’s start by thinking of our own consciousness. In Gnosticism we say that there are three different orientations to self-awareness. This is generally called three types of people: the spiritual, the psychological (called psychical), and the material type that is oriented toward their body’s level of awareness (called hylic). Most people’s self-awareness arises from their psychological level of functioning—their ego. Spiritual types add the voice of the spiritual level to their self-awareness. Here at Gnostic Insights we call this spiritual aspect their Self (with a capital S). The physical or material type of person focuses on their body and its needs and abilities. When their body performs well, or their body’s needs are satiated, their ego is pleased. They may or may not ever dip a toe into the spiritual level of self-awareness until they inevitably face the afterlife.
Now the interesting thing about what I call units of consciousness is that every living thing in our universe carries a piece of the originating consciousness of the Father. The term unit of consciousness applies equally well to any size creature, from the smallest bacteria or cell on up through the largest of the Second Order Powers. On the other hand you have the mud—that being the smallest subatomic particles, protons and whatnot, on up through the atoms, molecules, and elements—which are unconscious and operated by the Demiurge. That mud level of nonliving material arises from the deficient pleroma of the Demiurge. The egoic consciousness of the Demiurge is disconnected from its higher Self—the Aeon Logos—and so it has forgotten the love and memory of the Father and the ethereal plane because those spiritual aspects are part of the One Self and not the ego. After the fall of Logos, the Demiurge was aware of only the egoic portion of Logos and the shadows of the Pleroma of Logos that became the hylic material of this fallen cosmos.
Every nonliving thing in our universe belongs to the demiurgic consciousness, whereas every living thing is a true, self-aware unit of consciousness that flows unimpeded through the Son, through the Fullness, and on into all living creatures as the Self. When I first came up with this idea of units of consciousness in A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, I thought that if every manifest object in our universe is a piece of the mind of the Father then it has to be a piece of consciousness, yet there was always a schism between the living and the non-living creation. But with the hindsight of Gnostic realization I now see that the nonliving “mud” is without consciousness and is ruled by the strong bonds of the Demiurge, whereas the living “meat” of our universe embodies the top-down consciousness of the originating Source—the Father.
The Father’s source consciousness is illimitable, undifferentiated consciousness without particular thought. Once the Father had a thought, that is referred to as the Son, S-O-N. The Son contains all of the Father’s qualities, like a bucket dipped into the sea of consciousness. And the Son is an encapsulation of the Father, with all of the traits of the Father, except now in a particular place, so to speak—a unit of consciousness. The Son is what is called a monad with a unique and particular point of view.
So the Son is the first unit of consciousness. And then, according to our Gnostic studies, the Son immediately differentiated into the ALL and the Fullness of God, which is all of the traits of the Son of God broken down into their individual variables. And since the Son of God is an infinite, omnipotent force of thought, there are an infinite number of Fullnesses.
And these Fullnesses (or Totalities as they’re called in some translations) come to Self awareness through giving glory to the Father. When they become Self-aware, they sort themselves into a hierarchy called the Hierarchy of the Fullness of God. At that point they come to be referred to as Aeons, A-E-O-N-S, the Aeons of the Fullness. And they sit together in a perfect unit called the Pleroma or the Fullness of God. They stay together. And all together, they are the body or pleroma of the Son. The Son wears them like a garment and they wear the Son like a garment, which means they are coexistent.
I have suggested that each of these Fullnesses is itself a fractal of the Son, although each of the Fullnesses has a particular duty, a particular place, position, name, and function in the Fullness of God. In the same way that you can look around our world and see that the wind blows—the function of the wind is the force of movement; or a tree stands in the soil and grows in its particular place. As a monad, we each have a particular place, a particular point of view from where we stand. All of these different individualities are fractals of the Son of God—fractals of consciousness. But we only manifest what we are here to do. We manifest our position, place, and function in the overall scheme.
Each unit of consciousness is a fractal of the mind of God. And when I mention God’s mind, this is not the Father, the God Above All Gods. This generally refers to the Son of God, because the Son of God is a thought form—it is the Universal Unit of Consciousness that conceives of our universe. The Son is the basic knowledge of all aspects of our cosmos. Whereas the God Above All Gods, the Father, is a background matrix of consciousness without thought—the pure stillness of mind. So while the Son of God is formally referred to as the Son, in most common parlance the Son of God is also referred to as the Father, because it is the Father of the Fullness and our universe. And the Fullness of God, or the Pleroma of the Hierarchy of the Fullness, is the parental unit of all of the Second Order of Powers by way of the Aeon Logos. The Fullness is the First Order of Powers; all of us around here are the Second Order of Powers. The nonliving material of the Demiurge is an imitation of the Pleroma of Logos. The atoms and archons are not Powers—they are imitations—likenesses of the Pleroma of Logos.
Each unit of consciousness is capable of using the organizing principles that inform and sustain its existence in our universe. So every unit of consciousness has a job, a position, a place, a point of view, and it is perfectly capable of utilizing them. It is fully capable of doing the job put to the material that that unit of consciousness governs. Second Order units of consciousness operate according to the aeonic mechanism I call the Simple Golden Rule. The Simple Golden Rule states that units of consciousness reach out to others and “hold hands” to share information, assistance, and love in order to work together on projects that they can’t accomplish on their own.
Unlike the inert material directed by the will of the Demiurge, Second Order Powers come fully loaded with free will, and each unit of consciousness makes decisions affecting the material it governs. A photon makes no decisions—it is the Demiurge that decides whether to go left or right according to various optical and physical laws of the universe and its relationships with other photons. It has no free will but it fulfills the duties assigned by the Demiurge. A Second Order cell’s unit of consciousness, on the other hand, decides which materials to gather from its environment to sustain itself and reaches out to other cells like itself according to the Simple Golden Rule to hold hands and build organs.
Units of consciousness never evolve, because each unit of consciousness is already a perfect fractal of the Fullness of God, one that emerged directly from the Pleroma above, by way of Logos after his return. As the material to which the Second Order Powers are melded becomes more complex, with more complex and massive attachments, the unit of consciousness that has chosen to govern that aggregation of material focuses its attention to that level of decision-making.
Units of consciousness are social, and they are additive in number. They tend to work together in harmony with others like themselves, and that is because, using the Gnostic Gospel terminology, every unit of consciousness is one of the Second Order of Powers that was sent down from the Fullness to bring order and harmony and cooperation to the fallen Logos. And the reason that units of consciousness work together in harmony with others like themselves is because they are instantiating the basic principle of the Fullness of God, which is that Simple Golden Rule of reaching out, holding hands, supplying information, assistance, and love in order to build something greater and level up to the next level.
And that begins to level up from the bottom on upward because it was decided, according to the Tripartite Tractate, that every Second Order Power would come one by one from the smallest to the largest. All units of consciousness of the same level of complexity are linked laterally to one another in common purpose. And that’s where I say that they are metaphorically holding hands. At the smaller levels, our cells hold hands and work together to build our organs. And our organs hold hands and work together to build organisms. These are lateral aggregations of like units of consciousness. We hold hands with other humans or with other large mammals like cattle or dogs and cats and so forth. We hold hands in order to have a society, in order to build the next level up at this large mammal level.
ALL units of consciousness aggregate, that is gather, hierarchically under more complex units of consciousness. So what this means is that when units of consciousness reach out and hold hands, according to the Golden Rule, they level up. The higher, the fewer. A hierarchy is shaped like a pyramid. Because when you get a bunch of units of consciousness together and they all hold hands and they’re concentrating on one project, the thing they make, the thing that comes out of the middle of them holding hands, is just one thing, whereas there were many of them holding hands. The degree to which any unit of consciousness comprehends the universe depends upon how complex its aggregate of units of consciousness are. Think of a family—it is one family but there are several members. Think of an organ—there is one skin organ, for example, but there are 1.6 trillion skin cells. The skin cells reach out and hold hands to make that one skin organ—the higher the fewer. In other words, every unit of consciousness fully comprehends the entirety of the universe but is only aware of its immediate neighborhood.
The more units of consciousness downline that make up this one entity, and I tend to think of these things as pyramids, just like the Hierarchy of the Fullness is a pyramid. If I think of my body, rather than looking like this human walking around with two arms and two legs, I tend to think of myself as a pyramid with my governing unit of consciousness sitting right here on the top of my head. That’s my governing unit of consciousness, and it is the Raja sitting on this elephant of this giant pyramid of over 10 trillion smaller units of consciousness that all reside within the confines of my skin.
We are a very large and complex aggregation of units of consciousness. And every human is, every dog is, every cow is, every bird is, every leaf of grass, everything is an aggregation of units of consciousness that have leveled up, always holding hands, leveling up, leveling up, leveling up, until you ultimately wind up here at this governing unit of consciousness sitting on the top of the stack. Of course, this follows the Fullness of God model, with the Father at the top. And so the degree to which any unit of consciousness, let’s say my governing unit of consciousness, the degree to which I comprehend the universe, is dependent upon all of these subunits of consciousness inside of me. We all add up together, and we all have our perception of this universe. And that contributes to my governing unit’s perception of the universe.
Distribution of these units of consciousness is hierarchical. The more complex the material to which a unit of consciousness is attached, the fewer instances of it exist. Life forms consist of the aggregated units of consciousness attached to the material forming their bodies, plus the unit of consciousness of self-awareness. The more complex the organism, the more units of consciousness it possesses. Each functional organ system within the organism possesses its own unit of consciousness that governs that organ. So inside of my body, the next largest units of consciousness are my organ systems. My heart has its own unit of consciousness. My stomach has its own unit of consciousness. And we all know that our sex organs have their own units of consciousness, right? So all of these organ systems in your body have their own units of consciousness. They are in charge of their duties. They do the job of keeping the organism alive in the particular way that they work. The heart beats, and it coordinates the blood, it does all the things that the heart does. It’s alive, and it’s its own unit of consciousness.
These organ systems have their communications among them, and they can talk to each other. They can powwow. In my own mind, that’s what I think they do. Now, it probably doesn’t sound like you and me talking together, but certainly there are electrical impulses that they send and read one to the other and chemical exchanges. You know, I mentioned how I think of my body as a pyramidal shape. I refer to it as meat mountain. So you’re in on that now. You could think of your body as a meat mountain, and it’s hierarchical shaped because it’s a mountain. And all the parts of meat mountain talk to each other.
Usually one level of the hierarchy can communicate with itself at that level, and maybe it has a sense of the level above, maybe it has a sense of the level below. But for example, my governing Self unit of consciousness, I have a strong connection with my body’s organ systems. I know when something wants something, right? I know when I’m hungry. I know when I’m happy or sad. I know what my sex organs want to do, or I know if my skin itches or if it’s dry or whatever it is. But I can’t jump down a couple of levels to the cellular level. We all that capability. Some people demonstrate that awareness, but I don’t. From my governing unit of consciousness, I am not aware of what goes on underneath the organ level. I do not ride along with the blood or with the small cells. I am not aware of that. I’m only aware of the level above and the level below my governing unit of consciousness. The level above my unit of consciousness is easy. That’s my social level. So, what do I hold hands with to level up to? Generally, it’s society. It’s family. It’s neighbors. It’s work. These are different projects in which my unit of consciousness is engaged with others, and I’m aware of those. To skip above that level of consciousness to the next higher level is more speculative. The Son’s mind is the most complex unit of consciousness of all, consisting of all potential as well as all actual units of consciousness in our universe, plus its own omniscient consciousness.
The more complex the unit of consciousness, the more sophisticated its decision-making abilities. A particular cell will take care of its own cellular requirements by taking in nutrients from its surroundings and by reaching out to others of its kind according to the Simple Golden Rule. It will not drive to Burger King and order a hamburger. Every unit of consciousness has its own decision-making sphere of influence, and it makes the decisions that are relevant to its sphere of influence. So the more complex the unit of consciousness, the more sophisticated its decision-making abilities. Animals are extremely sophisticated complexes of units of consciousness, comprised of the trillions of units of consciousness making up an animal—a human, a dog, a cow—and they have a lot more decision-making abilities. And again, decision-making capabilities is another word for free will.
Most units of consciousness perform their work as expected. They do their part. They work according to plan, and that’s a really good thing because that’s what holds everything together. The material controlled by the consciousness of the Demiurge is foundational. If the Demiurge did not control the material, the material universe would not hold together and it would completely and very rapidly fall apart. On the other hand, Second Order Powers, who are fractals of the Aeons above, have complete free will to either fulfill or contradict their responsibilities. Most units of consciousness do their job according to the job they were given to do and, overall, things work according to plan. There is enough redundancy in the system so that when the odd unit of consciousness decides to go rogue, things still hold together.
And of course, this is essentially what happened with the Fullness of God. The Fullness sits there in perfect agreement, in a union of one accord, and the Aeons cooperate according to the Simple Golden Rule. But one of those units of consciousness, one of those Aeons, that being Logos, decided to go rogue and reach for the Father on its own, and it did not work out. Logos fell. But the rest of the Pleroma stayed in agreement. As it says in the Tripartite Tractate:
The Logos himself caused it to happen, being complete and unitary, for the glory of the Father, whom he desired, and he did so being content with it, but those whom he wished to take hold of firmly he begot in shadows and copies and likenesses. (verse 77).
And speaking of the Fall, when Logos fell, it turned into its inverse. It is the shadow of Logos down here. And so the cooperation that is so apparent in the Pleroma is not evident in the body of the fallen Logos without the imposition of strict laws and control. Rather than turning out a universe of fractals of the Father, Logos turned out a universe of shadows, copies, and likenesses.
And that’s why I suggest that the fallen Logos is the origination of the quantum foam level of instantiation. And what characterizes quantum foam is chaos, randomness, and an inability to work together to level up. Quantum foam just keeps bubbling. It just keeps popping in and out of existence. It just keeps bumping into its neighbors. It’s nothing but chaos.
Here is its description from the Tripartite Tractate:
The Logos was a cause of those who came into being and he continued all the more to be at a loss and he was astonished. Instead of perfection, he saw a defect; instead of unification, he saw division; instead of stability, he saw disturbances; instead of rests, tumults. Neither was it possible for him to make them cease from loving disturbance, nor was it possible for him to destroy it. He was completely powerless, once his totality and his exaltation abandoned him (verse 80).
The Logos, being in such unstable conditions, did not continue to bring forth anything like emanations, the things which are in the pleroma, the glories which exist for the honor of the Father. Rather, he brought forth little weaklings, hindered by the illnesses by which he too was hindered. It was the likeness of the disposition which was a unity, that which was the cause of the things which do not themselves exist from the first (verses 80, 81).
Logos repented from his egoic overreach and his spiritual Self returned back to his brethren Aeons in the Fullness, abandoning the shadows of his pleroma and his ego down below. And so we have the non-cooperative, unconsciousness of the quantum foam being organized and governed by the ego of Logos—the Demiurge. The Demiurge knows the patterns of the Fullness, such as the Simple Golden Rule, but he is disconnected from the enlivening forces of the Aeons above and he is unable to imbue his creation with life.
Second Order Powers don’t have to reach any level of sophistication to be a governing unit of consciousness. All governing units of consciousness are psychological ego combined with spiritual Self. From our cells on upward, every unit of consciousness governs the material they are attached to. Our cells govern themselves at the cellular level. The organs’ units of consciousness govern the organs. Our body’s governing unit of consciousness governs our body’s existence in this material world by attaching to the hylic material of which we are made.
The governing unit of consciousness isn’t always paying attention to the body or even doing its job of conscious decision-making. My governing unit of consciousness may be preoccupied with thoughts or songs or emotions, and so my Self isn’t making many here-and-now decisions, but leaving those decisions to the body’s aggregate units of consciousness. Activities like driving a car, having sex, eating, taking a bath, can all be carried out by the body’s organ-level units of consciousness without my governing supervision or awareness. And I suspect that a lot of the time that goes on.
Yesterday, by the way, I was watching a video where the speaker claims that most people we encounter are non-playing characters or NPCs in a cosmic simulation. He talked about their dead eyes, lack of introspection, and whole-hearted assimilation of identical ideas implanted through propaganda such as mainstream media. Some Gnostics think the NPCs are the hylic category of people referred to in some Gnostic scriptures and so will evaporate at the end of time along with material existence, never going onward and upward. I must admit it is an engaging idea. I’ve discussed this possibility with my brother, Bill, on several occasions.
Bill says no way. He reminds me that all life forms are Second Order Powers. If it’s alive, it comes from above and will return to its home above. Bill says that these people have only forgotten to a greater extent our ethereal origins and so are existing solely at the level of the ego and body. I chuckle because the hylics irritate me so much that I’d just as soon write them off as NPCs. But that’s not very nice of me and I doubt that’s what Jesus would do.
As complex systems die and disintegrate, their aggregated units of consciousness are released from the responsibility of supporting that particular life or material instantiation. So when a creature dies, the governing Self unit of consciousness is immediately released and after that, the organ systems. Each unit of consciousness leaves independently, at their own speed, to return to an ethereal existence. As the cells begin to die individually, each one releases its unit of consciousness, and each of these units of consciousness is released into what is called the Akashic Record. It’s the in-between place. A way to think of it is the place where souls go between incarnations or before moving on to their eternal home.
It’s only the meat units of consciousness that pass on to the ethereal plane after so-called death. The molecular and elemental units stay down here in the realm of the Demiurge. Atoms don’t die; molecules don’t die because they were never alive in the first place. They simply revert back to their previous unconnected state, so they’re no longer part of this meat mountain. They have been let go. But when part of the meat dies, those hierarchical units of consciousness find themselves untethered from the material world, yet they are still fractals of God, and they are still holding the information or the karma and the memes of their lifetimes unless they were previously detached. We don’t lose our identity or Self awareness. We hold onto our non-detached memes—our beliefs and our learning—and we hold on to the record of what we have done—our karma, and this is what is typically called the soul. These are the parts then that reincarnate into the next aggregation of meat that is ready to attach to the next level up governing unit of consciousness. You bring in your karma. You bring your memes into your next lifetime. Or, you may be able, with the assistance of the Third Order of Powers of the Christ, to “stick the landing” in the ethereal plane and not return to the material cosmos. We find out when we get there.
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