Episode Details

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 w