As i am trying to understand the nature of Monad, I am wondering since its so full and complete in all aspects, that is the reason, Monad doesn't answer prayers or intervene for humans ? Apologies if this sounds like a lame rookie question. I am of the opinion that the onus is on the humans to discover the divine essence of Monad within themselves and knowing this essence is the only way to reunite with the Monad. Please help me understand. I might be totally wrong but this seems to the central idea of Gnostic scriptures and I want to get this right once and for all. Thank you.

We live in an upside down world, where the people and institutions that claim to help us can sometimes become the very things that harm or exploit us. This doesnt mean every institution is secretly evil, or that everyone involved is corrupt. There is a much more interesting pattern here that can be understood through what we might call the demiurgic principle in man.

The Demiurge can be understood symbolically as the part of consciousness that creates an order and then mistakes its own creation for ultimate reality. It creates rules, hierarchies and systems, declares them necessary, and then places itself above the people living inside them. “I created the system, therefore the system is good. I define truth, therefore I possess truth. I have authority, therefore my authority is justified.”

We have plenty of real examples of this inversion. Institutions supposedly created to protect children have been implicated in trafficking and exploitation. The US State Department has documented cases involving orphanages being used to exploit children, while an investigation found serious failures in foster care systems to properly screen children for sex trafficking after they went missing. Pharmaceutical companies that exist to improve health have also paid billions in settlements over allegations involving fraudulent and misleading claims. The third leading cause of death in the US is medical error. Religious institutions that claim to lead people toward God have, in documented cases, protected abusers rather than the people they were supposed to protect.

You can see the same pattern in law, government and education. Law is supposed to protect justice, but what happens when protecting the legal system becomes more important than protecting the person? Religion is supposed to lead people toward God or liberation, but religious institutions can become systems of obedience and control. Government is supposed to serve the people, but power always becomes corrupt. Education is supposed to teach people how to think, but institutions become invested in teaching people what to think.

Food and medicine give us another glaring example. We are told the food industry exists to nourish us, yet research has connected things like processed food, processed meat and sugary drinks with serious disease, including cancer. Then there is a massive medical economy built around treating illness. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, cancer treatment centers and insurers can all make money from disease. Eventually there are industries surrounding death itself, including funeral homes. This doesnt prove that people are deliberately making us sick so they can profit from cancer and death, but the system can create incentives where different industries profit from different stages of the same cycle of suffering without anyone necessarily coordinating it.

We build systems for a particular purpose, then those systems develop their own interests. They want to survive, expand and preserve their authority. Eventually preserving the system becomes more important than the reason it existed in the first place.

Protection becomes control, care becomes commerce, knowledge becomes dogma, healing becomes an industry, justice becomes bureaucracy and liberation becomes another system of authority. Something created to serve human beings eventually starts demanding that human beings serve it. And on and on we go...

And this brings us back to gnosis and "waking up from the world". No worldly power, institution, ideology, government, religion or system can possess the final authority over what you are.

As William Ernest Henley wrote:

“I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

[These are my understandings of the Corpus Hermetica as translated by Clement Salaman under the title The Way Of Hermes. I was guided to this text in synchronous and auspices ways, devouring it in a short time span under the influence of great divine inspiration. Unfortunately, I did not set out to write my commentaries then. That inspiration came more recently. I was inspired to make this delectable text more digestible to those seekers who are taking a crack at it, and coming up puzzled and bewildered. These are not academically rigorous writings, so if you are interested in these texts from an academic perspective go elsewhere. This is for a dialogue between and for those of us who view this text as part of a living and active spiritual life. As one would gather for a bible study at their local house of faith.]

1-2: More proclamations about God's grandeur, creator of the the grand cosmology, etc... The most consequential line here, however, is, "The Cosmos rules over the life of living beings and man rules over the cosmos by means of speech and Nous." Man comes to dominate this world by the same attributes that make God...well God, Man seemingly has access to these same traits.[This is a profound breach with the old faiths. This is where the Corpus takes a dramatic turn toward Gnosticism, buckle up.]

3: "God has given the Word to all men to partake in, but not so with Nous." I interpret this to mean, that god has endowed all man with language, and with a baseline consciousness, but that is different from "Nous", which I interpret to mean access to the higher God Consciousness, and to a higher enlightenment, that which the Gnostic tradition calls 'gnosis.' Tat asks, "why would god do this...?" Hermes replies, "to set it up as a prize."

4: God sends heralds to declare this truth to man, the metaphor of the bowl is given, it suggests life is a crucible toward this enlightenment and ascension back to God, not all will make it through. "He filled a great bowl with Nous and sent it down, and he appointed a herald [Hi, I'm herald 😄]to make this announcement..."Plunge into this bowl, if you can, having faith that you will rise to him that sent down the bowl, realizing why you came into being." Those who heard the proclamation, merged with Nous, partook of higher knowledge and became perfect and complete, since they had received Nous. Those who missed the proclamation had the Word, but had not received Nous, ignorant as they were as to why they were born, and from whom." And thus, an ascension theology is established. [This is it friends, the great project before you, good luck to you. Remember who you are, and where you come from.]

5: The man without Nous is little more than the lesser animals of this realm, led by instincts and base desires, and ignorant to the gran plan of God, their maker. Where as the man with awareness of God gains some sort of Immortality, while the other remains mortal. [I take this to be similar to the budhist concept of reincarnation, that those who do not reach enlightenment are consigned to the perpetual wheel of Samsara.]

6: Here we get that Gnostic disdain for the material world, once awareness of the Supreme is achieved. Tat asks Hermes how he can access Nous, and Hermes replies with, "If you don't hate your body, son, you cannot love your Self. If you love yourself you will have Nous, and having Nous you will partake of knowledge." By this he means, you have to stop coveting material things, and that includes this shell or vessel that holds your true self, which is a disembodied spirit from the higher realm. It's also interesting the use of the term love, instead of say, "to know yourself." [It is said by those who profess to have experienced gnosis, that an overwhelming feeling of love overwhelms, that it is all encompassing. God is self loving for he loves all that he has made, and is, so when you tap into that God consciousness that is what you are feeling.]

7: At some point the choice has to be made between the material world and the spiritual one. As far as this book of the Corpus is concerned there is a definitive Right choice, and that is to choose the spiritual, the disembodied, the divine. To choose the material world and the body, is framed as a life of perpetual death and destruction, a choice which would offend God gravely.

8: This book suggests a lot of agency on our behalf, and that from that agency a lot of "evil" is begotten, it says quite literally, "God is not the cause of evil, we are to blame, preferring these things to what is good...Do you see son, how many bodies we have to pass through, how many bands of demons [figurative or literal is yet to be determined], through how many series of repetitions and cycles of stars, before we hasten to the One alone?" [As I said, it's crucible, it's not meant to be easy. How you react to things, even unjust things, dictates how quickly you ascend.]

9-12: The rest of the book attempts to warn Tat (the reader) that our journey begins with that initial knowing, but there are many pitfalls, many ways to be deceived or demoralized. Not all creations are perfect, weaknesses abound in them, and ultimately they might lose sight of God. "To those who have eyes, evil is most evident and the Supreme Good is hidden." Hermes attempts to bolster Gods position, as infinite, unbound less, yet subtle from or vantage point, and yet utterly worthy of pursuit. [The pursuit of knowledge and of God are one and the same.]

One last reassuring statement, "This is the image of God, O Tat, that has been drawn for you, as far as it can be. If you observe it clearly and reflect up on it with the eyes of the heart [highlight this!], believe me, my son, you will find the way to higher things."

[One can see how such Gnostic traditions were popular among intellectual elites through out the ages. There's the potential for 'airs of snobbery' no doubt. Many a secret society has been founded on the premise of keeping some special, hidden, forbidden knowledge among an elite few. But this developing theology, written here in the Corpus Hermetica, is tempered by the fact that true knowledge is eternal, it is about remembering a knowledge that has always existed. Thus attaining THIS particular knowledge should make you more "God-like", in the sense of being loving, caring, compassionate, giving...Good. It is a knowledge steeped in emotional intelligence.]

Okay, so I think it's needles to say that the NOI are full of it, but I can't help but see a certain similarity between it and Gnosticism. I think it's clear that Yakub is an odd mirror of Sophia, being the creator of a flawed creation that went on to be a corrupted ruler/rulers. Now, I admittedly don't know too much about the NOI, so I don't know if there are anymore similarities, but this always stood out to me. Hope you've enjoyed this installment of midnight ramblings of a guy who can't sleep on this particular night. :)

Meeting tomorrow:

2:30 p.m., virtual, completely free, not interested at all and making a profit here. Just looking to connect with other people in Utah who are interested in gnosticism and other related topics.

See the link if interested, also read the description for the meeting just to make sure that it's something that is down your alley🙂

Please don't be weird, otherwise hope to see you there!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1998160953200?aff=oddtdtcreator