God Beyond Religion: The Real Purpose and Meaning of the Resurrection

 “Nothing redeems us from this world but we are of the All, and we are saved. We have been saved from start to finish. Let us think about it in this way; let us accept it in this way”. ~Meyer, Marvin W.; Robinson, James M.. The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (p. 54). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

It is past time that we take back and regain the terms and concepts that orthodoxy, fundamentalism, and evangelicalism stole from the mission and message of Jesus. It is time to recognize that oh so fearful word, heretic is just a word used by people to gain control over other people. There are so many terms that orthodoxy repurposed for control that overturning it will be a big job.

One such term that I will address today is resurrection. It is only fitting to do so on resurrection Sunday! Another that has to be included is “the fall.” So, before I deal with the resurrection, I will briefly deal with the fall. What really was the fall? It was a fall into forgetfulness. That was the central message of the Gospel of Truth. What was forgotten? The fact that we are pre-existing divine souls. It is similar to the emptying that Paul wrote about in his letter to the Philippians. Upon incarnating into material reality, we empty our knowledge, in other words forget that we are indeed an aspect of the divine Logos, or the divine mind. That is our spiritual nature. Thus, being redeemed from the fall simply means that we are able to regain the knowledge of who we really are. This was the message and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. He chose to do this before the foundation of material reality.

How then does the resurrection redeem us from the fall? If we take the message of Jesus that was spoken while he was living and couple that with the resurrection, we have a solid proof that we are indeed partakers of the divine nature, and that we can remember and exploit that knowledge. It is the catalyst for love within us. Jesus’s message was that we are the offspring of a loving parent. He went on to teach that we are incarnations of the divine mind, or divine Logos. Paul said, let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. What mind was that? It was the mind that believed that God was a loving parent, (in deity there is both the masculine and feminine aspect.) It was a mind that believed our purpose here on earth was to develop love for one another. It was a mind that knew he was eternal and eternally the offspring of God.

The proof of this message was substantiated in the resurrection from the dead. It was the proof that individual souls are indeed eternal. Let’s face it. Jesus’s sacrifice happened when he incarnated. At that point he was going to die at some point. To die at the hands of the Roman occupation, at such an early age, was a way to stamp an exclamation point on his sacrifice. God did not sacrifice his son. The sun sacrificed himself as a proof of our divinity. Think about it, God did not need a blood sacrifice to forgive humanity for being the way it was created. It is archaic to think that animal sacrifice was necessary to appease the wrath of a God who is defined as love; defined as agape love; a love that keeps no record of wrongs.

I do not believe all of Valentinian Gnosticism. But the above quote from the Nag Hammadi scriptures is from the “Treatise on Resurrection” and that’s why I share it. The truth is we are all saved! The truth is we are all eternal! The truth is that we are all divine!

God Beyond Religion: Saved from Forgetfulness the Message of the Gospel of Truth

Before I dive into explaining the title, let’s examine the word Savior within the historical context of Jesus of Nazareth. In the first century of the common era, Savior (Greek Sotor) was a term given to Caesar. Caesar was the savior of the world because he provided “Pax Romana” Roman Peace. Also, there was an emperor’s cult that saw Caesar as a god man. Therefore, people were to give worship and allegiance to Caesar. This is an important understanding to have when one looks at the history of Christianity. The concept was not Roman. It was inherited from the Greeks and the Egyptians.

Since the term savior was commonplace in the first century, it is important to consider this when thinking of Jesus of Nazareth as savior. Savior from what? Well, for roughly 1,915 years, we have been told that it is from sin. I use the 1,915 years for this reason. It is from 30 CE to 1945. I say 1945 because it was the date of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. I realize that it took some time for that library to be translated, but I will use the date simply to give the time span of the method of salvation that has been the most widely accepted. That was the result of the emphasis being put on the bible. So, for almost 2,000. However, that was not always the truth. There were those who lived in the second and third centuries of the common era that saw salvation in a completely different light. One such group were the ones who wrote “The Gospel of Truth.”

For almost 2,000 years we were unaware of the Gospel of Truth, or that such a gospel existed. The reason is that it had been burned by the orthodox church, labeled as a heresy, and removed from the collective memory. It is interesting to me that I just recently took the time to read it. Interesting because I had been leaning toward a similar salvation. I had been leaning toward the idea that we all, not just Jesus, but we ALL, went through a similar experience before incarnating into the material, corporeal world. We all experience what Paul in Greek called “the Kenosis” or the emptying or our knowledge of our innate divinity and that we are children of the source, and the source is a loving parent and we are eternal.

Here is where the Gospel of Truth comes into significance. In italics, I will posit a writing from the Gospel of Truth. “What exists in him is gnosis, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be destroyed and that they might know the Father, Since forgetfulness existed because they did not know the Father, if they then come to know the Father, from that moment on forgetfulness will cease to exist. We empty our knowledge of our divinity upon incarnating, and Jesus’ unique message was to reignite the awareness that God is the parent and we are divine. This was delivered to him via the divine logos. He became aware that he was the incarnation of the divine logos, that God was his parent, and that love was the mission. He went on to teach according to the apostle John, or one of John’s students, that we too are the incarnation of the divine logos by the anointing of the logos or the Christ of the Logos.

So, the question would arise why the forgetfulness? Here is the answer that resonates deeply with me. The Source, the Parent, is conscious awareness and knowledge, thus the Greek word gnosis. Yet conscious awareness lacks experience. To be complete knowledge must be accompanied by experience. Without experience knowledge is pointless. We then, individual conscious agents, the Greeks called it psuche, we now call it the psyche which was translated into to English as the soul. We as individual souls incarnate to experience the knowledge we had as divinity and in order for the experience to be authentic we must empty or divinity and forget it. And yet, the fact that we were created in the image of God is best described by being conscious agents or eternal souls.

If there was a sin, it would be an error. The Greek word for sin means missing the mark, and the Hebrew word for sin means missing the way. So then, being saved from error would mean being saved from our forgetfulness of who we really are and what we are really capable of, and where we came from. The salvation would be an awakening to this old reality in a new way, and that would be a rebirth. When we remember our divinity and our source we are born anew, we become a new creation.

God Beyond Religion: An Egalitarian Gnosticism

The case against Christian orthodoxy is really solid when viewed with an open mind. The practices of the orthodox movement in general are shady when it comes to deciding what is orthodoxy and what is heterodoxy. The facts are undisputable. There was a rich variety of Christianity’s in the second through third centuries. Further, one can surmise that there was a rich variety of literature produced in the second and third centuries. It is very probable based on the Nag Hammadi find that there was much more literature that did not meet orthodox standards that was destroyed and will possibly never be seen. Let’s face the fact. It was serendipitous that we found what we found in the nineteen-forties.

Please do not jump to the conclusion that I think everything orthodox was wrong and evil and everything Gnostic and heterodox was right and good. That is not my view at all. You could say that I was born an egalitarian. From my earliest recollections I was always deeply concerned with what was fair and right for all. I still am. Its probably the reason that I see the error in the extreme polarization of our country these days. It almost seems like a plot of a bad movie but that is another topic for another time. Suffice it to say that egalitarianism in important to me.

While orthodoxy was not egalitarian neither was Gnosticism and the other heterodox views. I guess this makes me one following the left-handed spiritual path because for all of my years I have been a rebel. In a variety of ways, I hate conformity. My main criticism of Gnosticism is that it is exclusive. That is also my critique of Christianity, especially evangelical orthodoxy. I would argue that it is exclusivity that has alienated so many from Christianity. It creates an us verses them atmosphere. It creates a saint verses sinner when the truth is we are all a little of both. It reminds me of the Eagle’s lyrics “I’ve been searching for the daughter of the devil himself, I’ve been searching for an angel in white, I’ve been waiting for a woman who’s a little of both, I can feel her but she’s nowhere in sight” ~(One of These Nights) I think that these lyrics could be a metaphor for what most seek.

This is why I see the Gnosticism in some of John and some of Paul (not the Beatles.) Both writers have an egalitarian Gnosticism. In fact, universal reconciliation is an egalitarian doctrine, and it is present in both the writings of John and Paul. I know, they also sound exclusive at times, but that simply means they need to be discerned, and in my view that is exactly where gnosis comes into play. We are first and foremost conscious beings. If in fact we were created in the image of God, then that is consciousness. The Logos is consciousness. I believe it is fair to equate consciousness and spirit. In fact, we are tripart beings. We are body, spirit, and soul. The body is our flesh, our corporeal, material existence. The spirit is universal consciousness and our link to it. The soul is our individual psyche or our individual consciousness.

That was the egalitarian message of Jesus according to both John and Paul. We are the Logos in earthen vessels. This was the essential spiritual (universal consciousness) message that Jesus brought to humanity. YOU, I, and the FATHER are one. We are ALL wrapped up in each other because we all proceed from consciousness. That is egalitarian Gnosticism in a nutshell. That is the truth whether comprehended or not. All of us are moving in an upward spiral toward that ever unfolding and expanding realization. The way to grasp it with ever increasing degrees is to use our most important asset. It is our spiritual intuition. It is the amalgamating of the spirit and the psyche. Trust your gut! Both the orthodox scripture and the gnostic gospels contain spiritual revelation from source. You are capable of deciding which!