Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation. My brother shared with me this week an article that’s published in Scientific American, and I will post the link to that article here. The article is called, Where Does Consciousness Come From? Two Neuroscience Theories Go Head-to-Head. The subtitle is, Two Leading Theories of Consciousness Went Head-to-Head, and the Results May Change How Neuroscientists Study One of the Oldest Questions About Existence. This was published on April 30, 2025. And I’m not going to share much of this with you, except to say that neuroscientists still haven’t coalesced around one explanation of where consciousness originates, largely because it’s such a hard question to probe with the scientific method.
The article says that scientists have landed on two leading theories to explain how consciousness emerges. The first is called Integrated Information Theory, or IIT for short, and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, or GNWT for short. And it says that the frameworks couldn’t be more different, yet they rest on completely different assumptions, draw from different fields of science, and may even define consciousness in different ways.
The article goes on to explain that there have been a series of studies trying to decide which of those two theories is the right way to approach consciousness. And despite all of the scientific studies, nothing came to fruition. There were no results that proved either of the two theories.
The article says that this type of research will encourage new ways of doing studies, which is to design experiments that have the best chance of distinguishing between theories rather than finding evidence for or against one specific theory. And they explain that it’s very important to understand consciousness because it has, for example, a practical application when you’re dealing with people that are in vegetative states and comas about when to pull the plug, since no sign of consciousness shows up on the brain scans, then they feel the person is dead, even if their body’s alive, and so they pull the plug. But if consciousness is more diffuse than that, it is possible that the people are still alive and conscious, and that their bodies should be kept alive with life support.
I went back and looked at our Gnostic Insights articles and episodes to review what we have to say about consciousness. And I must say, there is no better explanation than the Gnostic explanation. And so I’m going to share with you again an episode called The Father of Consciousness, which is essentially the first chapter of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel.
This episode was originally the first episode of Gnostic Insights that described the rollout of consciousness through all the stages, and you can find it posted at GnosticInsights.com under A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel tab. This would be the first article. We reviewed this article in December of 2022, and it’s time to review it again, because this is the ground state of everything and everything that we believe.
It also clears up the what we call the category error of whether consciousness arises from the brain, and which neurons or synapses it’s contained in, and how the network works, which is the materialist scientific approach that isn’t working out, according to Scientific American, versus the idea that consciousness is the pre-existing ground state. Consciousness is the matrix of our entire existence. Materialism itself is debatable, but what we do know is that we’re conscious.
Here’s what the Tripartite Tractate has to say about that. As you know, we’ve been looking at the Gnostic Gospel according to the Tripartite Tractate, which is one of the books of the Nag Hammadi scrolls. The Tripartite Tractate is a book that focuses on the origins of our universe and everything in it, including us. So I thought we would look around again today and revisit the Tripartite Tractate and what it has to say about the Father as the first principle of Gnosticism.
Philosophers often speak of the hard problem of consciousness. The materialist scientists don’t believe in consciousness. They believe that we are only our physical bodies and that any appearance of consciousness or of a soul is merely a byproduct of physical mechanisms—hormones, atoms moving around, that kind of thing.
It seems to me that the soul that people speak of surviving is the consciousness that began with the Father and derives from the Father. And that is why, whenever I discuss the system of consciousness, whether it’s in my earlier philosophy called A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything or The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, my prior Gnostic book, it always begins with the Father because the Father is where consciousness resides. The Father is consciousness itself.
The Father is another word for consciousness. Then, this entire creation cosmology that’s presented through the Tripartite Tractate and then re-presented again in my books, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated and A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, is the path by which consciousness proceeds out from the Father, through the Son, through the Totalities, and the pleroma of the Hierarchy, and on into the Second Order Powers that populate the Earth. So, this is why we begin with the Father.
The Father is the ground state of consciousness and this is why we begin to build out from the Father the flow of consciousness. My Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything book and blog are devoted to the notion of what is called panpsychism, which suggests that consciousness resides in everything. In Gnostic terms, we say that the Father extends His consciousness throughout all living things that populate the cosmos.
I like to begin with the cosmos as it unfolded and rolled out. The word for that sort of study is cosmogony, which is defined as 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 principal 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? And 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 sort of knowledge is known as gnosis.
Today we begin at the very beginning, and that has to do with what is called the Father. This story, this cosmogony, begins before the beginning of time, because there was no time before our material cosmos existed. I’m going to compare a couple of different versions of the Tripartite so that we have a fuller picture of the Father.
One of the books I’m going to use is the Nag Hammadi scriptures, the one edited by Marvin Meyer, and the translator in this case was a person named Thomassen. The other version we are going to compare it to is the one posted at the Gnostic Society library that you can find at gnosis.org, and this version was translated by Harold Attridge. In the Tripartite Tractate, the introduction says,
As for what we can say about the things which are exalted, what is fitting is that we begin with the Father, who is the root of the totality, the one from whom we have received grace to speak about him. (verse 51)
Another version says,
In order to be able to speak about exalted things, it is necessary that we begin with the Father, who is the root of the All, and from whom we have obtained grace to speak about him. For he existed before anything else had come into being, except him alone. (verse 51)
I invite you now to think of the originating consciousness as a vast consciousness which has no place and no time, no history. It is nothing but pure consciousness without thought, similar to what the Buddhists call the Buddha mind. This clear state of pure consciousness is something people try to achieve during meditation, where you can be aware that you are conscious, but you have no particular thoughts or words or images going through your mind. This is the originating Father. The Father has no thought, no images, no structure or form, no thing at all. This pure consciousness is the Father. There is no gender associated with this Father. Calling God “Him” or “Father” is a metaphor. Obviously the Father is not a man with a beard and long robes. The Tripartite Tractate says,
Rather he possesses this constitution without having a face or form, things which are understood through perception, whence also comes the title, “the incomprehensible.” If he is incomprehensible, then it follows that he is unknowable, that he is the one who is inconceivable by any thought, invisible by anything, ineffable by any word, untouchable by any hand. He alone is the one who knows himself as he is, along with his form and his greatness and his magnitude. (verses 54-55)
So no matter how much we try or science tries or philosophy tries, the underlying consciousness underneath our existence will never be grasped, will never be measured. It cannot be discovered. Which begs the question, if the Father is unknowable, then what are we doing here describing him? If the Father is incomprehensible, then why are we even discussing him?
What we are doing here at Gnostic Insights, and what I believe the writer of the Tripartite Tractate was doing, is that we are describing the Father as what is called a first principle. In philosophy, a first principle is a first cause, an origin, from which all else proceeds, and all subsequent arguments are based. First principles are not provable. They are what is called a priori assumptions, upon which all else proceeds. This is why here at Gnostic Insights we spend so much time discussing the Father. The Father is the a priori, the first cause, the uber first principle of all else that follows, not only in a religious sense, but in a cosmogenic sense, as it is the basis upon which everything else may be logically deduced.
Now back to the idea of gender. The reason this consciousness is called Father and not Mother has to do with the direction of movement initiated by the Father. The Father is a consciousness that extends outward from itself. It emanates, it does not receive. He extends consciousness. Extension is sometimes translated as will, but it refers to the Father reaching out for what he is driving toward. The Father extends consciousness out from itself as the originating source.
In this sense, we can contrast that extension with the concept of female, which is receptive, which is that which takes into itself. The Father gives, the Mother receives. This Father’s basic consciousness is not thoughts, but rather love, the sensation of what we call love.
So this consciousness simply is, without time, without any prior existence, unchangeable, unmovable, without beginning or end, utterly quiet, utterly still, utterly alone. This Father is often described as all-knowing, but what is there to know? All-seeing, but what is there to see? All-loving, but what is there to love? Omnipotent wisdom and will, but to what end? There’s nothing there. Quoting the Tripartite Tractate,
It is said of Him that He is a Father in the proper sense, since He is inimitable and immutable. Because of this, He is single in the proper sense and is a God, because no one is a God for Him. Nor is anyone a Father to Him, for He is unbegotten, and there is no other who begot Him, nor another who created Him. It is, then, only the Father who is God, in the proper sense, that no one else begot. As for the Totalities, He is the one who begot them and created them. He is without beginning and without end. (verses 51-52)
So what this is saying is that other gods with a small g have been created or have been born, but not this one. This is the original God with the big G that no one created. This is the original source.
Not only is He without end, He is immortal for this reason that He is unbegotten, but He is also invariable in His eternal existence, in His identity, in that by which He is established, and in that by which He is great. Neither will He remove Himself from that by which He is, nor will anyone else force Him to produce an end which He has not ever desired. He has not had anyone who initiated His own existence. Thus He is Himself unchanged, and no one else can remove Him from His existence and His identity, that in which He is, and His greatness, so that He cannot be grasped. Nor is it possible for anyone else to change Him into a different form or to reduce Him or alter Him or diminish Him. (verse 52)
The other translation reads very much like that.
He is without beginning and without end, for not only is He without end, being unborn makes Him immortal as well, but He is also unchangeable in His eternal being, in that which He is, that which makes Him immutable, and that which makes Him great. (verse 52)
Of course, immutable means can’t be mutated, can’t be changed.
He does not move Himself away from what He is, nor can anyone else force Him against His will to cease being what He is, for no one has made Him what He is now. End quote. In other words, God cannot change His character, His nature, He will not change His mind, His principles and His values will never change, and He can’t be destroyed or added to. (verse 52)
God is not dead, in other words. As an aside, I’m reminded of the Hadron Particle Collider located in CERN, Switzerland, the largest and most complex machine on Earth. The function of the Hadron Particle Collider is to crash elemental particles into each other, trying to split them into smaller and smaller pieces, trying to break particles into the smallest possible particle. And in fact, what the Hadron Collider has been trying to do for the last number of years is to fire particles at each other with such great force and speed that they break into the essential particle of the universe that they like to call the Higgs Boson or the God Particle. They are literally looking for the God Particle. And indeed, exactly 10 years ago to the day, July 4th, 2012, scientists declared that they had found the God Particle.
Now, what we’ve just read in the Tripartite Tractate is that the Father cannot be broken up into smaller pieces. God is immutable. He is indiscoverable in the sense that the scientists are trying to discover Him. So we would have to make a prediction that these particle accelerators and particle colliders will not be able to find a God Particle because He is not discoverable. Now, they may have found the Higgs Boson, but you see, God itself is not physically discoverable in that sense. It cannot be broken down into smaller pieces. And it seems to me that this is what this next paragraph is talking about.
Therefore, neither does He change Himself, nor will another be able to move Him from that which He is, from what He is, from His way of being, or from His greatness. Thus He cannot be moved, nor is it possible for another to change Him into a different form, either by reducing Him, or changing Him, or making Him less. For this is truly and veritably how He is unchangeable and immutable, being clothed in immutability. Thus He is called without beginning and without end, not only because He is unborn and immortal, but also because just as He is without beginning, He is also without end. In this manner of being, He is incomprehensible in His greatness, inscrutable in His wisdom, invincible in His might, and unfathomable in His sweetness. (verse 52-53)
We can conclude from this description that if humanity manages to destroy the Earth by way of a worldwide nuclear war, let’s say, or aliens come and blast us to pieces like the Death Star, the Father would still be unchanged. The Father would still exist underneath it all without having been affected. The material world cannot affect the Father. So if the entire universe ceases to exist, the Father is still there underneath it all. So it may be that we can destroy ourselves, we could destroy our planet, we can destroy our galaxy, we can destroy the entire universe, but we certainly cannot destroy the Father. Carrying on,
In the true sense, He alone, the good, unborn, and perfect Father who lacks nothing, is complete, filled with everything He possesses, excellent and precious qualities of every kind. Moreover, He has no envy, which means that all He owns He gives away without being affected and suffering no loss by His gifts. For He is rich from the things He gives away, and finds rest in what He graciously bestows. (verse 53)
The other translation says that
The Father is unfathomable in His sweetness, in the proper sense. He alone, the good, the unbegotten Father, and the complete perfect One, is the One filled with all His offspring, and with every virtue, and with everything of value, and He has more, that is, lack of any malice. (verse 53)
The book goes on,
He is of such a kind, and form, and great magnitude, that no one else has been with Him from the beginning. Nor is there a place in which He is, or from which He has come forth, or into which He will go. Nor is there a primordial form, which He uses as a model, as He works. Nor is there any difficulty, which accompanies Him and what He does. Nor is there any material, which is at His disposal, from which He creates what He creates. Nor any substance within Him, from which He begets what He begets. Nor a co-worker with Him, working with Him on the things at which He works, to say anything of this sort, is ignorant. Rather, one should speak of Him as good, faultless, perfect, complete, being Himself the totality. (verses 53-54)
So, if we’re going to think about our modern physics again, and cosmology, and if we think there are multiverses, that is, we’re just one universe in a sea of other universes floating in this great pool, this Father that we’re describing would be back before all of that. He is not the Father of our universe alone. He is the Father of the entire sea within which all things float. Everything comes out of Him, and He exists before all of that. Carrying on,
There is no name that suits Him among those that may be conceived, spoken, seen, or grasped, however brilliant, exalted, or glorious it is, to be sure. But the way He is in Himself, His own manner of being, that no mind can conceive, no word express, nor see, and nobody to touch, so incomprehensible is His greatness, so unfathomable His depth, so immeasurable His exaltedness, and so boundless his extension. (verse 54)
Here at Gnostic Insights, we say that although the Father cannot possibly be grasped, we all possess a sense of Him, for we all contain the one seed of His consciousness. The Father wished to be known, to know and to be known, to love and to be loved. Therefore, the Father has provided us a cookie trail to follow in our quest for Gnosis. It is said that we use these words of praise or glory to the extent that we, the ones who speak, are capable, but they fall far short of actually describing what is the Father. The Tripartite then goes on to say,
And since He has the ability to conceive of Himself, to see Himself, to name Himself, to comprehend Himself, He alone is the one who is His own mind, His own eye, His own mouth, His own form, and He is what He thinks, what He sees, what He speaks, what He grasps Himself, the one who is inconceivable, ineffable, incomprehensible, immutable, while sustaining joyous, true, delightful, and restful in that which He conceives, that which He sees, that about which He speaks, that which He has as thought. He transcends all wisdom and is above all intellect and is above all glory and is above all beauty and all sweetness and all greatness and any depth and any height. (verse 55)
So this is my description of the Father prior to conceiving of the Son. These are descriptions out of the Tripartite Tractate of the Father, also known as the God Above All Gods. You can see for yourself that these descriptions of the Father are not the same as the descriptions of God in the Bible. The God of the Old Testament is personified. The God of the Bible is someone who can sit and have a discussion with people at a campfire or speak out of the middle of a burning bush.
Our Gnostic God exists prior to all of that and is greater than all of that. This God is not in a personified form, walking around on the Earth or floating just above the Earth looking down upon us. This Father is the gigantic, illimitable consciousness that underlies everything. This is an entirely different type of being than the God of the Old Testament, known as Jehovah. That personified character of Jehovah arises much later in the creation story than we are right now. But this is the beginning.
This God Above All Gods is the only goodness, joy, sweetness, true and delightful God. It is not a warlike or a jealous God. It does not send people into battle or kill the firstborn of the entire Egyptian nation. This God, as you can see, is qualitatively different than that. For now, thank you for spending this time with me. God bless, and Onward and Upward!
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