ABSTRACT
This work concludes with a creative synthesis resulting from this exploration of the gnosis of the reluctant Gnostics C. G. Jung and P. K. Dick. The use of the term “creative synthesis” in this instance simply acknowledges the fact that it is highly subjective. In homage to the inspired mind of PKD, it is presented in the style of his Tractates (although I’ve refrained from giving it any fancy Latin title).
Void and unknowable, the Pleroma is the ineffable nothingness before the beginning. It is neither created, nor not-created. It is non-being beyond being. It is the Godhead rather than God. The Pleroma is both the emptiness and the fullness. It has no qualities, yet it contains all qualities.
The Pleroma is fully transcendent and fully immanent. In the same way that light pervades the atmosphere, the Pleroma interpenetrates and pervades the created world. Split a piece of wood, or lift up a stone, and there will be found the Pleroma. Any distinction between the Pleroma and the created world is one of quality; the essence of the Pleroma is in the created world. There is no spatio-temporal separation.
168 Barbelo is the highest female principle. The Pleroma thinks, and his first thought, known as forethought, comes into being as Barbelo, his feminine counterpart, the first emanation and foremost of the aeons. One becomes Two as the Mother-Father. She is the creative power and the universal womb out of which everything else proceeds.
To assign gender to the One, the Pleroma, is incorrect. There can be no male without female; no female without male. The One, on its own, cannot have gender. Gender only arises when the One becomes Two.
Through the power of the Mother-Father, out of the emptiness of the Pleroma, the fullness of the Pleroma came into being through the emanation of male/female binary opposites known as syzygies. Individually, these emanated beings are the aeons. The last of these aeons is Sophia, Holy Wisdom, who forms a syzygy with her consort, Christ.
Creation occurred due to a primordial schism in which the perfect harmony of the primal syzygies was ruptured. If the primal syzygies had remained in perfect balance, unity would have persisted and the manifest universe could not have come into being. Creation required the harmonious balance to be disturbed and, as a result, disorder is not merely an unfortunate by-product of creation but one of the fundamental principles on which it is founded.
Creation is the result of the differentiation of pairs of binary opposites out of the Pleroma. Differentiation is creation. Without the differentiation of the opposites, there can be no world. Without differentiation, the syzygies of the Pleroma remain inert and in potentia only. Nothing can exist without the simultaneous existence of his complementary opposite. No hot without cold, no light without dark. In the Pleroma, prior to differentiation the opposites cancel one another out and are ineffective and not “real”. If they can be considered to exist at all in the Pleroma, then the opposites exist in a harmonious state of equilibrium. Only once differentiated do they come into effect and become what might be considered as “real”.
Life is born of the spark of opposites. Differentiation separates the opposites so that the resulting energy tension between the poles allows creation to come into being. Nothing can exist without a balancing opposite. Without differentiation, creation is an inherent potential of the Pleroma only, and the opposites remain in a state of perfect equilibrium. The created world is predicated on the differentiation of the opposites. This is the crux of Gnostic cosmogony.
169Both/and rather than either/or. This is a Gnostic maxim. The opposites are not just part of life in this world, they are fundamental to it. No opposites, no world.
Non-differentiation of the opposites is unconsciousness; differentiation of the opposites is consciousness. If the opposites are not differentiated psychologically, a person risks the sin of unconsciousness. The reconciliation and integration of the fully differentiated opposites leads to psychological wholeness.
There is great danger in favouring one pole of a pair of opposites over its complementary opposite pole. Psychologically, an imbalance of the opposites results in a split in the psyche and a loss of psychological wholeness. The two poles of a pair of opposites may appear phenomenally distinct, but their essence is fundamentally one. The nature of the opposites in creation is differentiated-yet-inextricably-united. There is no hot without cold, no light without dark. Ultimately, the opposites can never be truly separated, they issue from a single root. The opposites are only meaningful in relation to one another. The essential nature of the opposites is always both/and rather than either/or. The glass is, simultaneously, both half empty and half full. We cannot have one pole of a pair of opposites without the other, and to the extent that we strive exclusively for one pole, we unavoidably fall under the spell of its counterpart. The rejected pole is forced down into the unconscious where it coalesces with the shadow, our own personal demiurge. Psychological wholeness demands the acceptance of both poles. We must walk the middle path between the opposites, being neither too attached, nor averse, to either pole. Both/and rather than either/or.
An imbalanced conscious position will invoke a compensatory unconscious counter-position due to the self-regulatory nature of the psyche. If the inner psychological state is not made conscious, in other words, if the conscious and unconscious counter-poles are not reconciled, then, out of necessity, the unresolved conflict will be encountered in the outer world in what is generally regarded as fate.
Enamoured by the Light of the Pleroma, Sophia wanted to conceive on her own. Striving only for the light evoked a counter-position of darkness. That darkness is the demiurge and the archons and their fallen creation. The demiurge, accompanied by his archons, is the blind, ignorant, dark abyss of the shadow of the Soul.
170The demiurge and the archons are illegitimate. They are defective, and represent the disruption to the harmonious balance of the opposites that occurred in the Pleroma when Sophia conceived without her male counterpart. The archons are hermaphroditic. They are both male and female, yet not fully either. The harmony of the male/female syzygy has been disturbed within the archons, and the opposites are beginning to split. The archons are responsible for the severing of the original androgynous unity of the Pleroma into the duality of the created world. Having been created by the offspring of the last aeon, Sophia, the archons are far removed from the source of the Pleroma, and inhabit a liminal space within its lowest reaches, just on the cusp of the created world. As a result, the archons encroach upon, and have effect in, our world. This world is the dwelling place of many archons.
The demiurge, and his archons, lacked the power to create on their own. They hijacked the creative power of Barbelo, via her daughter Sophia, the demiurge’s mother, in order to fashion the created world. The demiurge and the archons then created humanity in order to provide them with what they lacked, the Light of the Pleroma. They created humanity so that the Light of God reflected in humanity could illuminate them. In other words, the archons created humanity as an energy source. The archons are energy parasites who feed off us!
The archons’ powers are limited. It is a mistake to think that the archons have power over us. They cannot overpower the truth. The archons have soul, and what is of soul cannot take hold of spirit. They can enact their violence on our bodies, minds, and souls, but they cannot harm our spirit. The spirit, on the other hand, is immaculate, immune, incorruptible, and immortal.
Due to their limited powers, the archons control humanity through deception. They do this in order to take free people and enslave them. Their power is their deception. The power of the archons is mere occlusion of the truth.
We are the archons. Sophia sent her daughter Zoe (meaning Life) into each one of us granting us a living soul. She is our Mother, she is also mother to the demiurge. He is our half-brother and, along with his offspring the archons, he is our collective shadow. All humans are archons, but some humans are more archonic than others.
171Abraxas is the god-above-god that humanity has disavowed. He is two-natures-in-one, embodying both good and evil, God and devil. Anything real casts a shadow that is as great as itself, and the shadow of God is the devil. There cannot be one without the other. Both/and rather than either/or.
Created as much as creator, Abraxas is distinct from the Pleroma, yet cannot be wholly identified with the world either. Like the archons, Abraxas exists in the liminal space between the Pleroma and creation. Abraxas is the demiurge.
Abraxas is nothing and everything, eternal emptiness and eternal fullness, eternal darkness and eternal brightness, above and below, old and young, yes and no. However, unlike the syzygies of the Pleroma, in which the opposites cancel one another out, God and devil stand opposed to one another within the figure of Abraxas. Effectiveness is both the differentiator, and the connecting link, that unites God and devil in the figure of Abraxas. The effectiveness of Abraxas gives both God and devil the ability to have effect in the created world. To encounter Abraxas is to experience the numinous, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, in all its awful mystery.
With the head of a rooster, a human body, and the tail of a snake, Abraxas unites the opposites, God and devil, good and evil, Heaven and Earth; opposites which collide in the experience of being human.
Given that he is two-natures-in-one, both God and devil, Abraxas is to not to be feared or loved, yet both feared and loved. Yet, he is neither to be sought after nor rejected since, like the archons’ veil of deception, Abraxas surrounds us on all sides and will seek us out. We must walk the middle path between the opposites, being neither too attached, nor averse, to either pole. Both/and rather than either/or.
In the same way that the aeons and archons constitute the fullness of the Pleroma, the archetypes constitute the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious—and the archetypes—is, in essence, one and the same thing as the fullness of the Pleroma. The archetypes have their positive and negative aspects, and are thus capable of exerting both beneficial and/or detrimental effects. Thus, as their metaphysical counterparts, the aeons and the archons can influence the human psyche, indirectly shaping, if not controlling, human 172experience. Psychologically, the archons are the negative aspects of the archetypes. It was the archons who compelled St. Paul against his will: “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. … For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Romans 7:15…19, KW).
Humanity has been imprisoned in the material world by the archons through an act of deception. This world is the Black Iron Prison. It is the shadow of death in which the human body is a tomb. This body-tomb has been created from the archons’ four elements of: matter, darkness, desire, and the artificial spirit respectively. The human soul, trapped in a body-tomb, has been bound by the veil of forgetfulness, and enslaved in the material world. How has the great wealth of the human spirit come to dwell in the poverty of the body-tomb?
This world is an illusory dream world that we have been deceived into taking for reality. So-called reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent, archon-enforced one. We are controlled by the archons because they control the false reality we are living in. However, the archons are effectively powerless, and their power over us exists only to the extent that they can deceive us into thinking that the false reality is actually real. This dream world is “real” as long as it lasts. We need to awaken from this sleep of death.
When we awaken to the illusion of the prison world, then we are no longer at its mercy. It will no longer control us, we will have control over it. When we realise that this world is an illusion, we transcend its limitations and become co-creators of it.
The essence of the universe is information. It is not three-dimensional, it is outside space and time altogether. Our world is a mere phantasm, a fallen world, in which space and time are part of the delusion. We have been thrown into this world, and enslaved by an evil entity that projects information which we have been deluded into interpreting as our so-called reality. This world is nothing more than the misinterpretation of an underlying reality of which the essence is simply information.
We humans are co-creators, along with the archons, in creating this dream world. We hypostatise the information we are fed into the phenomenal world. We are forgetful cosmic co-creators who have become imprisoned in a universe of our own making without realising it. Our illusory world is a mass hallucination. We are the archons.
173The phenomenal world does not exist. It is a three-dimensional holographic image, an illusion, generated from information, which we mistake for reality. Like the prisoners in Plato’s cave who mistake the shadows cast on the cave wall for reality, we, likewise, mistake our holographic world as being real. Our world is nothing more than a satanic interpolation of underlying information that results in a prison which occludes the information that will reveal our true situation. The fundamental nature of the fullness of the Pleroma is energetic information, and the archons have distorted this underlying information to project the illusory world in which we are
The Pleroma consists of analogue waveforms (undifferentiated opposites), and the created world consists of binaries (differentiated opposites). The poles of the pairs of opposites within the Pleroma can oscillate instantaneously, such that the male is not male, and the female is not female, whereas the created world, brought into existence through conscious observation, is binary in that it requires the tension between the differentiated opposites to spark creation into existence.
“The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21, KJV). The innermost core of every human being is a divine spark of the Light of the Pleroma. The macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm, hence, we are within the Pleroma, and the Pleroma is also within us. The divine spark within is a fragment of the entire cosmic hologram, only dimmer. As a part of the Pleroma, the divine spark contains the entire Pleroma, only less so. The divine spark is the indwelling Christ. “In him dwelleth all the fullness of the [Pleroma] bodily” (Colossians 2:9, KJV).
Due to the archons, the divine spark has become estranged from the Pleroma and imprisoned in matter. We are divine sparks enclosed in corruptible sheaves. When the divine spark remembers itself as both a part, and yet the whole, of the Pleroma, this is the gnosis of the Gnostics.
Our essence is the divine spark. Spirit, the immaculate divine spark, is immortal. As a part of the hologram of the Pleroma, it is one with the Pleroma, and contains the fullness of the entire Pleroma, only dimmer.
Gnosis alone is not enough for salvation. Gnosis is imparted by the emissary who descends from the Pleroma to free humanity from it 174imprisonment in the world of darkness. “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12, KJV).
The Self is the unifying and ordering centre of the whole psyche. The Self is the psychological aspect of the Christ, and the Christ is the spiritual aspect of the Self. They are one and the same at different dimensions of being. Realisation of the Self is the goal of life. It demands the reconciliation and integration of all opposites within the psyche, principal among them the union of the conscious and unconscious psyches.
The emissary can come as an image of the Self from the depths of the unconscious. The emissary from above, and the Self from below, are one and the same. The Pleroma and the collective unconscious are One.
There is only One Self. My Self is your Self; they are one and the same. One Mind there is; One Self there is, and that One Self is the fullness of the Pleroma.
The Self is Christ is the divine spark. The fully realised Christ manifests the full Light of the Pleroma.
Know thy Self. Be thy Self. Express thy Self. Creativity is freedom; conformity is slavery.
The emissary is known as the plasmate, an immortal form of energy which is living information. Through a process of cross-bonding, the plasmate can unite with a human being such that the human is permanently annexed to the plasmate, resulting in a homoplasmate, a divine-human syzygy. Cross-bonding is the reunion with the male plasmate with a female host and occurs in the pineal gland.
We are one with God, we are the creator, and we are the archons. We are also the saviour, and the one who needs to be saved; not two, but one. Salvador sal van dus. We are one with the Pleroma. We are the Pleroma. It is in us, and we are in it. Collectively, we are the One. Individually, we are a microcosm of the One. This is the gnosis of PKD.
The spirit is wholly of the Pleroma. The body is wholly of the world of matter. The soul is dual in nature: the divine aspect, or the living soul, that comes from Sophia, and the material aspect, or animal soul, that comes from the archons. The soul animates the body, and the spirit vivifies the soul. Without spirit, the soul is a lifeless soul.
175When the divine harmony was ruptured and the twin poles (male/ female) of the original androgynous unity were split apart and manifested in matter, they lost their spiritual nature and were reduced to a lower level of existence, the archonic, animal soul level. The reunion of spirit and the living soul, the restoration of the primal syzygy, generates life. Without reunion both twins of the syzygy are lacking their spiritual essence, they are mere souls, and nothing more than the living dead. This is the crux of Gnostic soteriology.
While the purity of the primal male/female syzygy was intact, the soul remained whole and in the Pleroma. Due to the rupture of the syzygy, the primordial fall occurred and the soul fell down into a physical body and entered human existence. The fall is not being born in sin, it is the rupture of the male and the female unity. Having been separated for millennia, the male (spirit) and female (soul) halves of the Pleroma need to be reunited to restore the primordial unity.
In the world, the soul becomes seduced by the distractions of the material world. Materialism, physicality, and the pleasures of the senses become her masters and she their slave. Addicted to the passions of the psyche and the flesh, she is trapped in the world of shadows. She needs to reject her “whoring” and, once cleansed, will be rejuvenated as a living soul.
Like Sophia without her male counterpart, the soul is unable to conceive on her own and needs her male counterpart. Being only one twin of a pair of opposites, the soul is unable to engender life. Her polar opposite is required and so her consort is sent down from the Pleroma into the whoredom of the realm of matter to rescue the fallen soul who is imprisoned by the archons. Her saviour, the “bridegroom”, and the soul, the “bride”, must be reunited in the mystical marriage in the bridal chamber. This is the resurrection from the dead, freedom from captivity in the world of matter, and the return to the Pleroma. Animal souls who are enslaved by their addictions to the distractions of the world, and who prostitute themselves to them, bar themselves from the rite of the mystical marriage. Only those who have freed themselves from the bonds of physicality and attained the purity of the living spirit can enter the bridal chamber.
We are spirit, we have soul. The soul knows duality. It must make a choice. The red pill or the blue pill. The whoredom of the animal 176soul in our brothel world, giving itself over to the passions of the mind and of the flesh, or seeking its redemption, its reunion with spirit, and a return to the purity of the realm of Light.
The psychological counterpart of spirit and soul is the anima/ animus complex which functions as the interface to the inner world of the unconscious. It acts as a bridge between the outer and inner worlds, and facilitates a dialogue between the ego and the Self, the image of God within the unconscious. The anima/animus is the doorway into the depths of the psyche. The relationship between the ego and the anima/animus archetype within the unconscious is characterised by the male/female polarity of the self-regulating psyche. To the extent that the ego identifies with the masculine pole, the anima/animus adopts a compensatory feminine nature, and similarly, to the extent that the ego identifies as feminine, the anima/animus will appear masculine.
Spirituality and sexuality are a pair of opposites. They are not just a pair of opposites, but from a human perspective, the essential pair of opposites. The world comes into being through the differentiation of opposites in which the tension between the differentiated poles generates the necessary energy potential that gives rise to creation. It is only through the interplay of the cosmic forces of spirituality and sexuality that humanity can come into being. It is only within humanity that the interaction between spirituality, symbolised by a bird, and sexuality, symbolised by a serpent, can occur, hence the figure of Abraxas, who epitomises the clash of opposites, displays the bird-human-serpent symbolism.
In Jung’s gnosis, the sexuality of the male principle is more earthly and descends, whereas that of the feminine is more spiritual and ascends. In contrast, the spirituality of the male is more heavenly, and is oriented upwards towards the infinite, whereas the spirituality of the feminine is more earthly and is oriented towards the finite. The celestial mother governs female spirituality and male sexuality, whereas the earthly father governs male spirituality and female sexuality. In other words, the male and female principles are dual-natured and within each pole of the male/female polarity there exists a spirituality/sexuality polarity with different, but complementary, governing principles. This polarity within a polarity serves to illustrate the dynamic nature of the opposites in the Pleroma in which the twin poles within any given syzygy 177have not been differentiated. Like an alternating voltage in electrical systems, in which the voltage reverses direction periodically, the twin poles within the syzygy can switch their polarity, one moment male, female the next, and vice versa.
The only goal of the Gnostic is to return to the Pleroma. Salvation is the liberation of the divine spark from the spatio-temporal, material prison world, and its reinstatement to the realm of light, or into the depth and silence. Whereas the Neoplatonist might seek a return to the One, the Gnostic seeks a return to the Zero, in other words, the Nothingness of the Pleroma.
When the bride and bridegroom come together in the mystical marriage there is only one name for their union and that is rest; the rest that results from nothing but the pure contemplation of the divine. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, KJV).
The resurrection and return to the original purity of the Pleroma, dependent on salvific gnosis, includes the realisation that our spiritual essence is something that we already possess. It is not something that we need to develop, it is something we need to realise. We are already of the Pleroma, in the Pleroma, and permeated by the Pleroma. The resurrection is anamnesis of our divine heritage.
The return to the Pleroma is a contemplative journey involving a visionary ascent through a series of inner planes. These planes are controlled by the archons and must be carefully navigated in order to evade the archons who will do what they can to thwart the Gnostic’s efforts and keep him, or her, enslaved in the lower realms. The “ascent” is metaphorical, and not a movement upwards. It is the expansion of consciousness and an increase in gnosis.
These visionary ascents are not one-off events in which gnosis is acquired in the mother of all mystical experiences. They are, typically, brief events which provide a foretaste of the ultimate ascent the soul will make following the death of the body. Before visionary ascent, chop wood and carry water; after visionary ascent, chop wood and carry water. The attainment of gnosis is a process of incremental gains over a lifetime of dedicated practice. After each partial trip up the mountain to render unto God what is God’s, the Gnostic practitioner returns, with a little more gnosis, to the world and, out of necessity due to the limits of the body, to the task of rendering unto Caesar, while preparing for the next attempt at the summit.
178Crucial to the resurrection is the need to both a) reconcile the opposites, and b) realise the ultimate dissolution of the opposites in the Pleroma. If one is whole, then one will be filled with light, but if one is divided, then one will be filled with darkness. When one has integrated the opposites, when the bride and bridegroom have consummated their mystical marriage in the bridal chamber, then one will be filled with the light of the Pleroma. As long as the opposites are differentiated, and the bride has forsaken her betrothed and continues whoring, one remains condemned to the darkness of the world.
One will only return to the Pleroma when the two are made into one, when upper and lower are reconciled, and when the male and the female are reunited into a single being so that their gender differentiation is dissolved. Then, and only then, will the Gnostic see the light of the Pleroma. The return to the primal unity of the Pleroma is premised on the balancing of the opposites. The return, like the beginning, is unitary where there is neither male nor female, and all syzygies exist in a perfect state of harmonious equipoise, no movement, no vibration, no sound, just silence.
Those who do not fast from the world will not find the Kingdom of Heaven. Only someone who completely renounces the things of the world and subdues the passions can realise the truth of God. The power of the pure intercourse of the mystical marriage, which occurs in a realm superior to this one, has become defiled in its image on Earth, the carnal marriage. Only one who accomplishes the rite of the mystical marriage will receive the holy light, and if it is not received in this realm, it cannot be received in any other place.
Salvation requires a growth in consciousness in this life. Humanity’s worst sin is unconsciousness. Differentiation of the opposites is what saves humanity from unconsciousness. Consciousness demands the differentiation of opposites, and growth in consciousness demands the reconciliation and integration of the opposites. Psychologically, the struggle for salvation does not pit aeons against archons, but occurs in the unconscious, where psychic factors that will save us are opposed by psychic factors that will condemn us.
Salvation means escape from this world, the Black Iron Prison, in which our minds have been deliberately occluded to blind us to the fact of our imprisonment. The key to salvation is not to give in to 179what would be a natural urge to fight the system. What we resist, persists. Those who fight against the Empire become the Empire. To the extent we defeat the Empire, we become the Empire. We are the Empire and the Black Iron Prison. We are the jailed and our own jailers. We are the archons. All humans are archons, but some humans are more archonic than others.
Gnosis is direct, unmediated, experience of the divine, in distinction to someone else’s doctrine about the divine. Gnosis is the only road to salvation; ignorance and unconsciousness is sin.
Gnosis is revealed in secret. When you pray, enter into the silence of your heart, and pray to your Mother-Father who is in secret.
Second only to the conscious/unconscious polarity, there is no pair of opposites in greater need of our urgent attention than the primal syzygy, the male/female dichotomy. It is impossible to become whole when one half of that whole, the feminine, is denied. Critical to the salvation of humanity is the restoration of the divine feminine.
The union of spirit and the living soul occurs in the mirrored bridal chamber. Spirit and the living soul are mirror images of one another and have equal status. Spiritual practice aimed at receiving the spirit must be complemented by work to reclaim the soul.
Preparing the bride to receive the bridegroom means reconnecting with, and recovering, one’s lost soul. The reclamation of the soul requires a descent into the chthonic depths of the unconscious. Only to the extent that a tree’s roots dig down into the earth, can its branches reach to the heavens. Without the roots, there can be no branches reaching up to Heaven. The roots come first. In order to ascend, we must first descend. Authentic spirituality must be founded on a psychology that realises the soul and works to liberate the living soul from the imprisonment in the world of the animal soul. The bridegroom will only appear to the extent that the bride has been prepared.
Whoever is near to the saviour is near to the fire. To realise the reunion of spirit and soul necessitates that one endures the fire. It is incumbent upon every true Gnostic to burn away all that gets in the way of liberating the living soul. Only to the extent that we descend into the unconscious and expose ourselves over and over to the annihilation of the animal soul can we recover the lost living soul.
180One cannot attain the light above without first addressing the demons in the darkness of the depths, that is, by bringing the darkness into the light of consciousness. Preparing the bride, recovering the soul, requires working with the darkness of the unconscious. The living soul can only be reclaimed by delving into the shadowy depths of the unconscious, and this rescue mission means addressing our demons and wrestling with the darkness that holds her captive.
Recovering the living soul demands that we address not only our personal shadow, but also the darkness of the collective, demiurgic shadow to the extent that it touches us. As long as the root of evil remains hidden, its power over us will persist. It is powerful because we do not recognise it. When it is brought into the light of consciousness, it dies. As long as it is ignored, it takes root in our heart and dominates us. We become its slaves. If we are not conscious of the archons within us, they fall into the shadow. Liberating the soul begins with recognising the darkness.
Christ is a male/female, Christ/Sophia, syzygy. This realisation is the restoration of Sophia. Two essences in one.
Imagination is the only weapon in the war against the false reality imposed by the archons.
It is neither the soul nor the spirit that sees visions, but the mind, through the faculty of the imagination. The imagination can take us anywhere, up there, in here, or down there, and it is through the imagination that the above and below, the inner and outer, the spirit and the soul, and the Pleroma and the created world, can be reconciled and integrated. The imagination is the means of our salvation. Only in the imagination of the human mind, poised between the opposites, can the integration and dissolution of the opposites be accomplished.
You do not create your own reality, collectively, we create your reality. Collectively, we dream our so-called reality into existence. How-ever, we are the archons—as well as the archons’ slaves—and it is our minds, under the influence of our archonic selves, that are continuously dreaming this prison world into existence. We need to dream a better dream, and quickly.
Humanity is the interface between two worlds. The upper world of the bird and the lower world of the serpent only meet within humanity. The tension of the opposites between the upper and lower 181worlds brings creation into existence. In order to become we have to undergo the battle between the bird and the serpent. Human existence occurs in the middle world where the opposites of bird and serpent are pitted against one another.
The images from the unconscious, mediated by the imagination, are the means by which the truth is perceived.
The Pleroma will only be realised when the inner and the outer, and the upper and the lower, and the male and the female, have been integrated so that no distinction exists between them. The place where they meet and the integration takes place is in the human. The reunion of spirit and soul, through the imagination, occurs only in the human who has realised Christ. Only when the bride has been prepared by elevating the soul from an animal soul to a living soul, and the bridegroom, the emissary from the Pleroma with its salvific gnosis, has been received, can the mystical marriage be consummated by the power of the imagination. For the Gnostic, this is Christ-realisation, the way, the truth, and the life, without which no one returns to the Pleroma.
The archons cannot see a person who wears the perfect light, and cannot prevent that person’s ascension. This body of light is created in the mystery of union. Only once spirit and soul are reunited in the bridal chamber does the Gnostic don the garment of perfect light that protects him, or her, from the archons during the ascent back to the Pleroma. The bridal chamber, where the mystical marriage takes place, is located in the pineal gland. “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matthew 6:22, KJV). When the mystical union occurs in the third eye, then the divine spark, hosted in the pineal gland, becomes the Pleroma, and the full Light of the Pleroma fills the entire body.
The Gnostic path is, primarily, the via positiva. However, the integration of opposites demands both the via negativa and the via positiva. Both/and rather than either/or. The via negativa is the path of spirit, the via positiva is the path of the soul. We do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light alone, but by also bringing the darkness into the light of consciousness. The Pleroma is both the fullness and the emptiness, and the return to the Pleroma requires both the path of fullness, the via positiva (full of images), and the via negativa (devoid of images).
182Psychologically, the reconciliation and integration of opposites involves holding the tension of the opposites, which occur in the psyche when a conscious position is compensated by an unconscious counter-position, until the resultant energy potential evokes the transcendent function which propels consciousness to a higher level and back towards the Pleroma.
Psycho-spiritual development is complete when all opposites have been integrated and a state of psychic wholeness, the realisation of the Self, has been attained. When the perfect, harmonious balance of the opposites is achieved, when the mystical marriage of the bride and bridegroom is consummated, then Christ and Sophia are reunited and the One Self has been realised, the dream is over, the created world ceases to exist, and we have returned home to the Pleroma. This is the Gnostic resurrection.
