FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   >>  
e Mind" or "Logos" manifesting Himself through a Body of Universal Consciousness, represented sacramentally (that is to say effectually) in the "physical world" by the bodies of a body of believers. The rites of this body symbolised, again "effectually," the modes and activities of the Body of Universal Consciousness of which it was the outward sign, just as its doctrines reflected on the plane of mentation and discourse the workings of the Divine Mind, which are above mentation and discourse, though not contrary to it. The acceptance of these ideas seems to have constituted "Pistis"--"the Faith by which we believe in the Mysteries of the Man"--a mode of the Divine Energy which resulted in good works. "Gnosis" was the knowledge of the processes by which these ideas passed from the life of formal belief and intellectual assent into the life of realised consciousness. The "Hylics," men in Hyle or "Matter," were "the children of this world," so absorbed in the life of the senses five that they lived like "brute beasts without understanding." [Hyle as a technical term was not always understood too literally by the Gnostics and Platonists (see various passages in Codex Bruce), but derived its importance as the symbol of a certain state of consciousness.] "Psychics" were those whose consciousness was sufficiently aroused to accept a formal belief in viewless Divine Energies and to order their social conduct on the basis of that belief. The "Spiritual," the "Perfect," those perfected in Gnosis, that is, were those that were actually conscious of participating in a Mind in common and in a Body of transcendental energy in common. This Mind (Logos), Light-Spark, and Body (Monad) constituted a sole Being, Man, or the Son of Man, neither male nor female, and yet both, who enveloped all things, even those of Hyle (_v._ the Naasene Document) in His Infinite Perfections, who manifested all things, who was concealed in all things and who was above all things. An ideal Church or Community of "Spiritual" men, conscious of the whole Man in each of its members, could focus within itself, without any robbery, all the energies of the Universe, and by concentrating and applying them in a certain manner could give birth to the whole order within the consciousness of the called and chosen candidate, who thus became a "Self-Knowing," "Self-Fathered," "Fore-Fathered" god, a "Race without a King in the name God." His substance was "enformed
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   >>  



Top keywords:
consciousness
 

things

 

belief

 
Divine
 
discourse
 
Gnosis
 

conscious

 

mentation

 

common

 

Spiritual


formal
 
constituted
 

Fathered

 

effectually

 

Universal

 

Consciousness

 

concentrating

 

energy

 

female

 

transcendental


participating
 

substance

 

social

 
Energies
 

enformed

 
accept
 
viewless
 

conduct

 

perfected

 

Perfect


enveloped

 

Church

 
Community
 
robbery
 

concealed

 
chosen
 

aroused

 

members

 

candidate

 

manifested


Perfections

 

applying

 
Universe
 

manner

 
Naasene
 
Infinite
 

Knowing

 

energies

 
Document
 

called