Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. We’re proceeding through a study of the Tao Te Ching and how it relates to our Gnostic beliefs. Today we’re going to have a look at verse six of the Tao Te Ching. First, I’ll read the version translated by David Bentley Hart in his Tao Te Ching, A New Translation. It goes like this. The goddess of the valley is deathless;She is called the mysterious Mother,deep and subtle, the Mother’s dark womb.The gateway to the mysterious Mother’s abodeis the foundation of Heaven and Earth. The one origin lasts forever and ever,like an endless strand of gossamer,ceaselessly drawn out, yet never depleted. So it’s a fairly short verse. In comparison, Jonathan Star’s translation draws it out quite a bit. He uses more words in his translation of the Tao Te Ching, from The Definitive Edition. He says, Endlessly creatingEndlessly pulsatingThe Spirit of the Valley never dies.She is called the Hidden Creator. Although She becomes the whole universeHer immaculate purity is never lostAlthough She assumes countless formsher true identity remains intactWhatever we see or don’t seeWhatever exists or doesn’t existIs nothing but the creation of this Supreme Power Tao is limitless, unborn, eternal—It can only be reached through the Hidden CreatorShe is the very face of the AbsoluteThe gate to the source of all things eternal Listen to her voiceHear it echo through creationWithout fail, She reveals her presence Without fail, She brings us to our own perfection That’s how Jonathan Star puts it. We can see we’re talking about what Gnostics call the Divine Feminine. I don’t talk much about the Divine Feminine. Actually, I don’t know that I talk at all about the Divine Feminine, because it’s not brought up in the Tripartite Tractate. But as we discovered by studying the Tao Te Ching in our previous several episodes, the Divine Feminine in the Tao Te Ching is translated as a yin force. And yin is receptive. Yin draws in. Yang is active. Yang puts out. In Gnosticism, the Father is a yang force. He is the Origin. And the Origin has to be, by definition, emitting, emanating, putting forth. This is why it’s called the Father. Do you understand? This is not a slight against women. This is not like saying, Oh, patriarchy wants God to be male. It’s not that at all. It’s that yang force is outward pushing. Yin force is inward pulling. Women receive. Men penetrate. So the Divine Feminine force is that womb of creation that receives the emanations of the Father. It says in verse 78 that after the Fall, when those parts of Logos that were left behind that formed our material cosmos, Logos rushed back up to the Pleroma to be with the other Aeons. It says in verse 78 of the Tripartite Tractate, When He who produced Himself as perfect actually did bring Himself forth, [and we’re talking about Logos—He produced Himself as perfect. He was a perfect fractal iteration of the entirety of the Fullness]. So it says, When He who produced Himself as perfect actually did bring Himself forth, [and that bringing Himself forth, that becomes our material cosmos. That is the womb of creation.] Because, listen, it says, He became weak like a female nature, which has abandoned its virile counterpart. [So the female nature is yin, receptive, bringing in what comes from the yang force. The virile counterpart is the yang force. The female nature is the yin force]. So once again, it says, When He who produced Himself as perfect actually did bring Himself forth, [that is when Logos, who was perfect, fell, He brought Himself forth, fell], He became weak like a female nature, [that is, He became yin, receptive], which has abandoned its virile counterpart, [that is, the yang force]. It goes on to say, From that which was deficient in itself, there came those things which came into being from His thought and His arrogance, but from that which is perfect in Him, He left it and raised Himself up to those who are His. He was in the Pleroma as a remembrance for Him so that He would be saved from His arrogance. The one who ran on high, [that is Logos], and the one who drew Him to Himself, [that is the Father or the Son who was sometimes called the Father], were not barren, but in bringing forth a fruit in the Pleroma, they upset those who were in the defect. So this is saying that the yin space that was left behind after the Fall, when Logos retreated, when His yang force retreated, He left behind the yin vacuum and that it was not barren. It brought forth fruit in the Pleroma, that is, creation. So this is finally here in the Tripartite Tractate where we’re talking about the yin and the yang. The female nature being that which has lost its “virility,” that is, its outward force, and has become yin, is what was left behind here. And that vacuum was filled with creative power from the Pleroma, that is, the Fullness of God—the Holy Spirit of creation, the Great Mother that was the womb of creation. I don’t really care for the mythology surrounding the Fall of Sophia. So I do not go out of my way to teach the Fall of Sophia. I don’t like the whole business. It seems to me that the Divine Feminine, the Holy Spirit, is the entirety of the Hierarchy of the Fullness. I think it is an error to equate a single Aeon—Sophia—with the Divine Feminine property of the cosmos. According to the Tripartite Tractate it is the Fullness as a whole that sends life into the cosmos in order to restore the Fallen Demiurge to Logos, not the single Aeon named Sophia. The worship of Sophia, the Aeon, is misplaced. It is the Fullness, the Holy Spirit of the God Above All Gods, the “cloak worn by the Son,” that is the Divine Feminine expressed within our cosmos. This is from verse 67 of the Tripartite Tractate. It says, He knows them which things He Himself is, since they are in the single name and are all speaking in it. And He brings them forth in order that it might be discovered that they exist according to their individual properties in a unified way. And so the He is the Son, and what He brings forth is the Totalities of the ALL, or the Aeons when they become self-aware. So they are parts of the Son that then become self-aware. The Holy Spirit, the Divine Feminine, is much more powerful and Full than any single Aeon, because she is the entire Fullness of all Aeons. This is how it is that all creatures can be sent into the cosmos with their predesigned attributes—they are all preexistent in the Fullness, not within the single Aeon of Sophia. Sophia does not contain all of the attributes of the Fullness; Logos does, in fractal form. The Tripartite Tractate says that the Fall was created by Logos. And Logos contains within itself, remember, fractals of the entirety of the Fullness of God. So we might say that Logos is non-gendered, if we want to get into today’s terminology for things. Because Logos contains all possible personalities, all possible forces, all physics, all chemistry, all bonding, and all energy and power is all represented by Logos. But at that stepped down, fractal iteration. And that’s what we have down here from the Fall. We are children of the Elohim of Adonai Elohim In my Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, I did refer to the inception of the universe as the Mother of 10,000 things, as it’s called in China, or the womb of creation. And in my mind, you know, it’s shaped like a big torus, a big donut shape, but we don’t have to get into that here. Now let me give you my translation of verse six. And I am achieving this translation by looking at Jonathan Star’s Definitive Edition and his chart at the back of the book that gives all possible definitions of each pictogram. So, reading from the all possible definitions side of verse six, here’s how I would put it. The Holy Spirit that fills the world never ceases. This mysterious spirit is referred to as the Divine Feminine. This is the gateway, the primal womb that discloses the source and wellspring of Heaven and the creation of Earth. Ceaseless and enduring without end, it continues on forever. Her provision never runs dry. Drawing upon it will not exhaust its usefulness. That’s it. It’s a short verse. Now, in Star’s footnotes for this verse, the word Shēn—spirit, soul, God, the Spirit that fills this world, the spiritual reality of the void or the Tao—the pictogram is two hands extending a rope plus influx from heaven. So you put those two signs together into one pictogram and it’s the sign by which the will of heaven is known by mankind. And that is known as the Holy Spirit and that’s how I translated it. The other footnote here looks at the phrase Hsuän pin. Hsuän translates as mysterious, profound, secret, subtle, deep, hidden, dark, abyss, origin, primal principle. That’s the Hsuän part. And the pin part is female, woman, mother, mare, womb, female qualities, creative power, mysterious female, abstruse womb, dark mare. But it also means mystic, mysterious female, mysterious feminine, mysterious feminine element, mysterious femininity, profound female, dark female, subtle female, mysterious mother, mother of the abyss, mother substance of the deep, primal mother, mother of heaven, abstruse womb, mystery of passivity, dark mare, or what we would call in Gnosticism, Sophia, Divine Feminine. So what I take from this verse six is that the Holy Spirit is a female principle— Hsuän pin . I’ve always felt that; I’ve always thought that the Holy Spirit was feminine. You have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There you have the Father, the Mother, and the Child. So they are all represented in the Trinity of Christianity. However, it’s never so clearly put. And we also have, from this verse six, that the universe, or the cosmos, as we call it in Gnosticism—cosmos is another word for universe—it’s bigger than a galaxy. It’s bigger than the Earth. So while these things are often translated as Earth in the Tao, we’ve upped the game to cosmos in Gnosticism, meaning every place that is material. That is here, as opposed to the ethereal realm, the divine, which is outside of the cosmos. And in my Simple Explanation way of explaining things, I think of our cosmos as this gigantic, really infinitely large, torus shape. And remember, the torus is like a donut, but this cosmic torus is like a gigantic donut with a zero point at the middle, and that is the here and now. And the inside of the donut is our cosmos. Outside of the donut is the ethereal space of the Father and the Fullness. So we have this border, and the border is mentioned in the Tripartite Tractate—that after the Fall, the Father put a border around the broken bits and pieces of Logos that formed themselves into the Demiurge and our material cosmos. So we have our feminine cosmos, the womb that holds creation, just like the womb of any creature holds its creation inside of it. Life is in the womb. And of course, it’s always been a mystery. It continues to be a mystery to this very day, how it is that a female, and well, we can talk about humans here, although all creatures have their wombs and their babies, is that the female human nourishes and grows and is her human conduit for the Holy Spirit that is infusing and developing the fetus within her womb. This is a miracle of birth. It’s truly a miracle, because people have always wondered, how is it? Where does this life come from? It comes through the womb. So the human mother is like the Divine Feminine in that she holds the womb of creation within herself and nurtures it until it is born. It manifests as its own material creature and grows up the way it was designed in the Fullness. Because, you know, we’re not random folks. It just kills me that people think that the baby that is developing within the woman’s womb is a random happenstance collection of evolved events that burp out a baby at the end, if they’re lucky and they’re not aborted, that is. The action of pregnancy and then the subsequent birth of a live creature out of seemingly nothing is a mystery. So all pregnant women represent the Divine Feminine and the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in the world. Of course, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Feminine, permeates the cosmos. It’s in the very air we breathe, the flowers, all the critters, everything that is living. Not the rocks and stones, they don’t give birth, but all of the living creatures do. And that is the Divine Feminine that populates the cosmos. All that the Demiurge could knock together was the material level of the cosmos—the atoms, the molecules, the elements, the minerals. That is the realm of the Demiurge. And then the immaterial archons that are the subselves of the Demiurge, that are the henchmen, the minions of the Demiurge. And they have their power in the belief systems, the meme bundles that the living carry with them. So I would like to state here and now, it is clear that abortion is a demiurgic, archontic move. Abortion kills the intended child that the Fullness was sending into the world. And we all have our functions to perform. We all have our position, place, and duty. And when a child in the womb is aborted by a human decision, it is a direct contradiction to the will of God. It is a funeral to be mourned. It’s a sad, sad error. We serve either the forces of good or the forces of evil. And there is no real force of evil—there is only ignorance. The Demiurge is not evil. The Demiurge is forgetful, doesn’t realize what’s going on, doesn’t realize where it’s coming from, doesn’t respect the Divine Feminine. And this is why other schools of Gnostic thought, other books, show Sophia as a tragic character once she has come to Earth, show her as being raped by the Demiurge or the archons. So the question I pose to you is, whose side are you on? So let me read for you once more my version of verse 6 and see if this makes sense to you. The Holy Spirit that fills the world never ceases. This mysterious spirit is referred to as the Divine Feminine. This is the gateway, the primal womb that discloses the source and wellspring of Heaven and the creation of Earth. Ceaseless and enduring without end, it continues on forever. Her provision never runs dry. Drawing upon it will not exhaust its usefulness. And this is another way of talking about the never-ending stream of consciousness, life, and love that flows out from the Father, that flows down through the Aeons, down through the Holy Spirit—the divine presence that is manifested in our cosmos. Remember, the Christ came for all of us. The Christ redeems us all. If you have made mistakes, if you have done terrible errors in the past, even killing the life within you, you are forgiven. You’ve been taken care of. The Christ will redeem you. You merely need to ask for the redemption. You need to repent and ask for redemption, and you will be washed clean. So God bless us all, and onward and upward. If you are a regular reader or listener of Gnostic Insights, please consider donating to this effort with a little monetary support. I can’t grow the channel without your financial support. I am working on a number of videos to be uploaded to YouTube, but everything costs money. If you can afford it, please help. 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Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. We’re proceeding through a study of the Tao Te Ching and how it relates to our Gnostic beliefs. Today we’re going to have a look at verse six of the Tao Te Ching.
First, I’ll read the version translated by David Bentley Hart in his Tao Te Ching, A New Translation. It goes like this.

The goddess of the valley is deathless; She is called the mysterious Mother, deep and subtle, the Mother’s dark womb. The gateway to the mysterious Mother’s abode is the foundation of Heaven and Earth.
The one origin lasts forever and ever, like an endless strand of gossamer, ceaselessly drawn out, yet never depleted.

So it’s a fairly short verse. In comparison, Jonathan Star’s translation draws it out quite a bit. He uses more words in his translation of the Tao Te Ching, from The Definitive Edition.
He says,

Endlessly creating Endlessly pulsating The Spirit of the Valley never dies. She is called the Hidden Creator.
Although She becomes the whole universe Her immaculate purity is never lost Although She assumes countless forms her true identity remains intact Whatever we see or don’t see Whatever exists or doesn’t exist Is nothing but the creation of this Supreme Power
Tao is limitless, unborn, eternal— It can only be reached through the Hidden Creator She is the very face of the Absolute The gate to the source of all things eternal
Listen to her voice Hear it echo through creation Without fail, She reveals her presence
Without fail, She brings us to our own perfection

That’s how Jonathan Star puts it. We can see we’re talking about what Gnostics call the Divine Feminine.
I don’t talk much about the Divine Feminine. Actually, I don’t know that I talk at all about the Divine Feminine, because it’s not brought up in the Tripartite Tractate. But as we discovered by studying the Tao Te Ching in our previous several episodes, the Divine Feminine in the Tao Te Ching is translated as a yin force. And yin is receptive. Yin draws in.
Yang is active. Yang puts out. In Gnosticism, the Father is a yang force. He is the Origin. And the Origin has to be, by definition, emitting, emanating, putting forth. This is why it’s called the Father. Do you understand?
This is not a slight against women. This is not like saying, Oh, patriarchy wants God to be male. It’s not that at all. It’s that yang force is outward pushing. Yin force is inward pulling. Women receive. Men penetrate.
So the Divine Feminine force is that womb of creation that receives the emanations of the Father.
It says in verse 78 that after the Fall, when those parts of Logos that were left behind that formed our material cosmos, Logos rushed back up to the Pleroma to be with the other Aeons. It says in verse 78 of the Tripartite Tractate,

When He who produced Himself as perfect actually did bring Himself forth,
[and we’re talking about Logos—He produced Himself as perfect. He was a perfect fractal iteration of the entirety of the Fullness]. So it says,
When He who produced Himself as perfect actually did bring Himself forth,
[and that bringing Himself forth, that becomes our material cosmos. That is the womb of creation.] Because, listen, it says,
He became weak like a female nature, which has abandoned its virile counterpart.
[So the female nature is yin, receptive, bringing in what comes from the yang force. The virile counterpart is the yang force. The female nature is the yin force]. So once again, it says,
When He who produced Himself as perfect actually did bring Himself forth,
[that is when Logos, who was perfect, fell, He brought Himself forth, fell],
He became weak like a female nature,
[that is, He became yin, receptive],
which has abandoned its virile counterpart,
[that is, the yang force]. It goes on to say,
From that which was deficient in itself, there came those things which came into being from His thought and His arrogance, but from that which is perfect in Him, He left it and raised Himself up to those who are His. He was in the Pleroma as a remembrance for Him so that He would be saved from His arrogance. The one who ran on high, [that is Logos], and the one who drew Him to Himself, [that is the Father or the Son who was sometimes called the Father], were not barren, but in bringing forth a fruit in the Pleroma, they upset those who were in the defect.

So this is saying that the yin space that was left behind after the Fall, when Logos retreated, when His yang force retreated, He left behind the yin vacuum and that it was not barren. It brought forth fruit in the Pleroma, that is, creation.
So this is finally here in the Tripartite Tractate where we’re talking about the yin and the yang. The female nature being that which has lost its “virility,” that is, its outward force, and has become yin, is what was left behind here. And that vacuum was filled with creative power from the Pleroma, that is, the Fullness of God—the Holy Spirit of creation, the Great Mother that was the womb of creation.
I don’t really care for the mythology surrounding the Fall of Sophia. So I do not go out of my way to teach the Fall of Sophia. I don’t like the whole business.
It seems to me that the Divine Feminine, the Holy Spirit, is the entirety of the Hierarchy of the Fullness. I think it is an error to equate a single Aeon—Sophia—with the Divine Feminine property of the cosmos. According to the Tripartite Tractate it is the Fullness as a whole that sends life into the cosmos in order to restore the Fallen Demiurge to Logos, not the single Aeon named Sophia. The worship of Sophia, the Aeon, is misplaced. It is the Fullness, the Holy Spirit of the God Above All Gods, the “cloak worn by the Son,” that is the Divine Feminine expressed within our cosmos.
This is from verse 67 of the Tripartite Tractate. It says,

He knows them which things He Himself is, since they are in the single name and are all speaking in it. And He brings them forth in order that it might be discovered that they exist according to their individual properties in a unified way.

And so the He is the Son, and what He brings forth is the Totalities of the ALL, or the Aeons when they become self-aware. So they are parts of the Son that then become self-aware.

The Holy Spirit, the Divine Feminine, is much more powerful and Full than any single Aeon, because she is the entire Fullness of all Aeons. This is how it is that all creatures can be sent into the cosmos with their predesigned attributes—they are all preexistent in the Fullness, not within the single Aeon of Sophia. Sophia does not contain all of the attributes of the Fullness; Logos does, in fractal form.
The Tripartite Tractate says that the Fall was created by Logos. And Logos contains within itself, remember, fractals of the entirety of the Fullness of God. So we might say that Logos is non-gendered, if we want to get into today’s terminology for things. Because Logos contains all possible personalities, all possible forces, all physics, all chemistry, all bonding, and all energy and power is all represented by Logos. But at that stepped down, fractal iteration. And that’s what we have down here from the Fall.
We are children of the Elohim of Adonai Elohim
In my <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Explanation-Absolutely-Everything-Conscious/dp/B08JB5WQP7/ref=sr_1_1?crid=278DXKCSGZLUN&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.0ZO3K1Haib7FZKO3IiiImYALuGSgkq2pECxf5Jvm1qgGevvoh6PqZSnNTKy-5UIkrglvxOnoeJ9G4TnhYMwrOKMVpklI2G60-EdZ_GLfocQsghx1W85k9HQyNi1xNpraqgd8a3xd-0d6m72qGQobReCb3js5EOpFnvebXLWarHXe8aQJpIds8YiNwuaPrBnf.DWVWow6BR1sHlMk7GSymRBZOeGTtKIrfvLXqVEN7W1Y&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=a+simple+explanation+of+absolutely+everything&amp;qid=1792252061&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C192&amp;sr=8-1" rel="noopener noreferrer">Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything</a>, I did refer to the inception of the universe as the Mother of 10,000 things, as it’s called in China, or the womb of creation. And in my mind, you know, it’s shaped like a big torus, a big donut shape, but we don’t have to get into that here.

Now let me give you my translation of verse six. And I am achieving this translation by looking at Jonathan Star’s Definitive Edition and his chart at the back of the book that gives all possible definitions of each pictogram. So, reading from the all possible definitions side of verse six, here’s how I would put it.

The Holy Spirit that fills the world never ceases.
This mysterious spirit is referred to as the Divine Feminine. This is the gateway, the primal womb that discloses the source and wellspring of Heaven and the creation of Earth.
Ceaseless and enduring without end, it continues on forever.
Her provision never runs dry. Drawing upon it will not exhaust its usefulness.

That’s it. It’s a short verse.
Now, in Star’s footnotes for this verse, the word Shēn—spirit, soul, God, the Spirit that fills this world, the spiritual reality of the void or the Tao—the pictogram is two hands extending a rope plus influx from heaven. So you put those two signs together into one pictogram and it’s the sign by which the will of heaven is known by mankind. And that is known as the Holy Spirit and that’s how I translated it.
The other footnote here looks at the phrase Hsuän pin. Hsuän translates as mysterious, profound, secret, subtle, deep, hidden, dark, abyss, origin, primal principle. That’s the Hsuän part. And the pin part is female, woman, mother, mare, womb, female qualities, creative power, mysterious female, abstruse womb, dark mare. But it also means mystic, mysterious female, mysterious feminine, mysterious feminine element, mysterious femininity, profound female, dark female, subtle female, mysterious mother, mother of the abyss, mother substance of the deep, primal mother, mother of heaven, abstruse womb, mystery of passivity, dark mare, or what we would call in Gnosticism, Sophia, Divine Feminine. So what I take from this verse six is that the Holy Spirit is a female principle— Hsuän pin .
I’ve always felt that; I’ve always thought that the Holy Spirit was feminine. You have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There you have the Father, the Mother, and the Child. So they are all represented in the Trinity of Christianity. However, it’s never so clearly put.
And we also have, from this verse six, that the universe, or the cosmos, as we call it in Gnosticism—cosmos is another word for universe—it’s bigger than a galaxy. It’s bigger than the Earth. So while these things are often translated as Earth in the Tao, we’ve upped the game to cosmos in Gnosticism, meaning every place that is material. That is here, as opposed to the ethereal realm, the divine, which is outside of the cosmos. And in my <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Explanation-Absolutely-Everything-Conscious/dp/B08JB5WQP7/ref=sr_1_1?crid=278DXKCSGZLUN&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.0ZO3K1Haib7FZKO3IiiImYALuGSgkq2pECxf5Jvm1qgGevvoh6PqZSnNTKy-5UIkrglvxOnoeJ9G4TnhYMwrOKMVpklI2G60-EdZ_GLfocQsghx1W85k9HQyNi1xNpraqgd8a3xd-0d6m72qGQobReCb3js5EOpFnvebXLWarHXe8aQJpIds8YiNwuaPrBnf.DWVWow6BR1sHlMk7GSymRBZOeGTtKIrfvLXqVEN7W1Y&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=a+simple+explanation+of+absolutely+everything&amp;qid=1792252061&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C192&amp;sr=8-1" rel="noopener noreferrer">Simple Explanation</a> way of explaining things, I think of our cosmos as this gigantic, really infinitely large, torus shape. And remember, the torus is like a donut, but this cosmic torus is like a gigantic donut with a zero point at the middle, and that is the here and now.

And the inside of the donut is our cosmos. Outside of the donut is the ethereal space of the Father and the Fullness. So we have this border, and the border is mentioned in the Tripartite Tractate—that after the Fall, the Father put a border around the broken bits and pieces of Logos that formed themselves into the Demiurge and our material cosmos.
So we have our feminine cosmos, the womb that holds creation, just like the womb of any creature holds its creation inside of it. Life is in the womb.
And of course, it’s always been a mystery. It continues to be a mystery to this very day, how it is that a female, and well, we can talk about humans here, although all creatures have their wombs and their babies, is that the female human nourishes and grows and is her human conduit for the Holy Spirit that is infusing and developing the fetus within her womb.
This is a miracle of birth. It’s truly a miracle, because people have always wondered, how is it? Where does this life come from? It comes through the womb. So the human mother is like the Divine Feminine in that she holds the womb of creation within herself and nurtures it until it is born.
It manifests as its own material creature and grows up the way it was designed in the Fullness. Because, you know, we’re not random folks.
It just kills me that people think that the baby that is developing within the woman’s womb is a random happenstance collection of evolved events that burp out a baby at the end, if they’re lucky and they’re not aborted, that is. The action of pregnancy and then the subsequent birth of a live creature out of seemingly nothing is a mystery. So all pregnant women represent the Divine Feminine and the presence of the Holy Spirit at work in the world.
Of course, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Feminine, permeates the cosmos. It’s in the very air we breathe, the flowers, all the critters, everything that is living. Not the rocks and stones, they don’t give birth, but all of the living creatures do. And that is the Divine Feminine that populates the cosmos. 

All that the Demiurge could knock together was the material level of the cosmos—the atoms, the molecules, the elements, the minerals. That is the realm of the Demiurge. And then the immaterial archons that are the subselves of the Demiurge, that are the henchmen, the minions of the Demiurge. And they have their power in the belief systems, the meme bundles that the living carry with them.
So I would like to state here and now, it is clear that abortion is a demiurgic, archontic move. Abortion kills the intended child that the Fullness was sending into the world. And we all have our functions to perform. We all have our position, place, and duty. And when a child in the womb is aborted by a human decision, it is a direct contradiction to the will of God. It is a funeral to be mourned. It’s a sad, sad error.
We serve either the forces of good or the forces of evil. And there is no real force of evil—there is only ignorance. The Demiurge is not evil. The Demiurge is forgetful, doesn’t realize what’s going on, doesn’t realize where it’s coming from, doesn’t respect the Divine Feminine. And this is why other schools of Gnostic thought, other books, show Sophia as a tragic character once she has come to Earth, show her as being raped by the Demiurge or the archons. So the question I pose to you is, whose side are you on?

So let me read for you once more my version of verse 6 and see if this makes sense to you.

The Holy Spirit that fills the world never ceases.
This mysterious spirit is referred to as the Divine Feminine. This is the gateway, the primal womb that discloses the source and wellspring of Heaven and the creation of Earth.
Ceaseless and enduring without end, it continues on forever.
Her provision never runs dry. Drawing upon it will not exhaust its usefulness.

And this is another way of talking about the never-ending stream of consciousness, life, and love that flows out from the Father, that flows down through the Aeons, down through the Holy Spirit—the divine presence that is manifested in our cosmos.
Remember, the Christ came for all of us. The Christ redeems us all. If you have made mistakes, if you have done terrible errors in the past, even killing the life within you, you are forgiven. You’ve been taken care of. The Christ will redeem you. You merely need to ask for the redemption. You need to repent and ask for redemption, and you will be washed clean.
So God bless us all, and onward and upward.
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Mining Gnosis Through the Tao Te Ching, verse 6

You needn't become a Taoist to be a Gnostic. These are just labels. But truth is truth, and there is only one truth.

You needn't become a Taoist to be a Gnostic. These are just labels. But truth is truth, and there is only one truth.

Mining Gnosis Through the Tao Te Ching–verses 1 & 31

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Last week I started hopefully a series, of mining gnosis through the Tao Te Ching. Last week’s episode explained the process by which I mine gnosis through the Tao. I’ve been mining that gnosis for well over 20 years without even realizing that it was going to turn into Gnosticism or a Gnostic interpretation of the Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese manuscript. It’s full of gnosis, and I have found it to be entirely compatible with the gnosis taught through the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, which is the book of the Nag Hammadi that I use here at Gnostic Insights to share my gnosis with everyone. Today we’re going to do another verse from the Tao Te Ching, the next verse in the book, verse 41. I’m not going to explain to you again the process by which I do this, but let me begin by reading to you Jonathan Star’s interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, verse 41, and here’s how it goes. The best seeker hears of Tao. He strives with great effort to know it. When an average seeker hears of Tao, he thinks of it now and again. When the poorest seeker hears of Tao, he laughs out loud. Tao is always becoming what we have need for it to become. If it could not do this, it would not be Tao. There is an old saying: The clear way seems clouded. The straight way seems crooked. The sure way seems unsteady. The greatest power seems weak. The purest white seems tainted. The abundant seems empty. The stable seems shaky. The certain seems false. The great square has no corners. The great vessel is never filled. A beginner may be clumsy, but after practice, what talent! A large drum may sit silently, but when banged, what noise! Tao lies hidden, yet it alone is the glorious light of this world. So that’s verse 41 by Jonathan Star. Now, for comparison’s sake, let’s look at another translation of the Tao Te Ching, this one by David Bentley Hart from his new book, Tao Te Ching, A New Translation. And thank you very much, Gabriella, one of our followers, who recommended it. The very best scholar listens to the Way and lives diligently in accord with it. The scholar of middling gifts listens to the Way, at one moment believing, at another losing faith. The poorest scholar listens to the Way and finds it risible. Then again, if he did not laugh at it, it would not really be the Way. These then be our maxims: The way of enlightenment seems dim and obscure. Every advance along the Way seems like a retreat. The easy level path seems arduous and uneven. The most exalted power seems like a plunging chasm. The purest clarity seems tarnished and dark. The most abundant power seems impoverished. The most formidable power seems like frailty. What is most substantial seems fluid and inconstant. The ideal square has no corners. The finest vessel takes till evening to perfect. The sweetest melody is hushed and tenuous.The perfect form has no shape. The way is hidden and nameless. Yet, for just this reason, the Way knows how to nourish and fulfill. So that’s verse 41, interpreted by David Bentley Hart. Now I’m going to share with you my interpretation of verse 41. And remember, all of these interpretations come from a myriad of choices, because we’re dealing with pictograms. And you can interpret the pictogram in many, many ways. I’m going to go through verse 41 line by line, pictogram by pictogram, and interpret it in a more obviously Gnostic type of way. The best, wisest, highest, student or type of person, hears Tao earnestly, attentively, with devotion, and lives in accordance with it, practices with diligence. The average, middle type of person hears about Tao and sometimes follows, sometimes believes, and sometimes doubts, sometimes loses it. The lesser, lowest, inferior type of person hears about Tao and ridicules it, laughs out loud. If they did not laugh, it would not be thusly the Tao. Now, before going on, let me explain that Tao means the Way, the path, and it is the Way of the Father. It is the path of glory. The Tao is the emanation of what we call the Father in Gnosticism. So whenever the Tao Te Ching speaks of Tao, think of it as the word of God, or the Way of the Father. And these first three stanzas described the three types of human, and interestingly enough, these exact three types of humans appear throughout Gnosticism. The Tripartite Tractate describes these three types of humans in verses 98 through 100. The best, wisest, highest type of person is called the pneumatic, P-N-E-U-M-A-T-I-C, also interpreted as the right ones. The pneumatic, those of God, are on the right. Those of the good thought, workers and servants of the Father, of the Father’s beauty and rest. The average middle type of person, as it says in the Tao, maps to what in Gnosticism we call the psychic, the fiery ones, the middle ones. They are characterized by a lust for power and ambition, and that is most humans. That’s from verse 100. And the lesser, the lowest, the inferior type of person, who laughs at Tao and ridicules it, they are referred to as the hylic, the left, the dark ones, the last. And they are brought forth by envy and jealousy. That’s verse 100. So, in other words, those who ridicule the path, who ridicule the Father—it’s their envy and jealousy that pulls them down. The middle type, the psychic, the fiery ones, the middle ones, they are characterized by emotion. They’re emotional. And this emotion brings them to a lust for power and ambition, because the emotions are resonating to the fallen ego, or the ruler of this world, the demiurge. And all of the emotions that get stirred up down here in the cosmos by the demiurge and the archons, they are meant to engage the majority of humans in fighting each other in the never-ending war for power and control, because of their ambition, and just being stirred up and upset all the time. The fewest type is the pneumatic, and those are the teachers of the Word of God, the saints, the prophets, the children of God in the truest sense, in that they have the heart of God, the heart of the Father. They’re not doing this ritualistically or rule-bound. They’re not hypocritically pretending to be good moral people. They are good moral people, and that’s how they view the world, through the eyes of the Father. Carrying on now in verse 41, Therefore, constructive sayings, proverbs, and maxims, such as the following: The enlightened Tao is the path to illumination, seems obscure, dark, and dull. Advancement toward Tao seems like, or resembles, retreat, falling backwards. And in a Gnostic way, we would say that what the seeker is retreating from, the retreat, the falling backward, is from worldly concerns and patterns. Because in order to follow the Way, you need to disengage from the world. The Bible says we are in the world, but not of the world. So, it’s like water and oil—they can be in the same bucket, but they do not mix. The next verse says, The straight and smooth Tao, path or Way, seems like, resembles, roughness—uneven, and difficult. I interpret this to mean that the actual path of Tao, the Way of God, the Way of the Father, the Way of glory, the glory beam, is straight, but it seems difficult, uneven. The path of glory coming down from above is true and straight and perfect, but our attempts to walk it are difficult. The next line is, The highest, exalted, superior Te—that’s power or virtue. It’s in the title of the book, the Tao Te Ching. The Way of Virtue resembles an empty chasm. So, the virtue around us in the world is like a vacuum. It’s an emptiness, it’s a chasm. And I would say from a Gnostic point of view that that is because the world is full of the Demiurge. We second-order powers were sent here to bring the love, consciousness, and life of the Father into this chasm. So, the Way of Te is the Way that we are to behave as second-order powers, spreading love and consciousness. Also concerning this idea that the highest Te seems empty, in the Tripartite Tractate, verses 59-65, it says, describing the Father’s relationship to the Totalities, that have been emanated from the Son–so, this is way upstream, this is before any humans, before any second-order powers, even at the very inception of the flowering of the Father into the fullness of consciousness that comes down to us—the Father doesn’t reveal Himself to the Totalities, yet they yearn for Him. What they know of the Father is but a trace of Him, revealed as a pleasant odor. So, the Father does not reveal Himself to the Totalities, which are the Totalities of the variables of the Son, all of the properties of the Son, but yet they seek the Father, like they’re pulled into a vacuum. The Father doesn’t reveal Himself, but, like a beautiful aroma, they long to reunite with the Source. It’s another way of looking at that verse. Carrying on with verse 41. Most perfect and pure clarity, innocence, looks like, or appears, sullied, tarnished, disgraceful. That is puzzling, isn’t it? I think it’s because those who actually express the path of Tao, or the Way of the Father, righteousness, they can be painted by others as disgraceful, tarnished, sullied. Their motives are denigrated. They’re made fun of, in the manner that the Hylics make fun of righteousness itself. So, even if you are passing through this world in a perfect and pure and innocent manner, you will look to others tarnished, disgraceful. The next verse says, The most abundant, overflowing, far-reaching Te, which is power and virtue, appears insufficient, defective, lacking. So, this is saying that the most abundant, glorious, righteous path that you may be on seems like it’s not enough, and it seems like it’s lacking something. I mean, after all, where’s your ambition to succeed? Where’s your ambition to acquire a big house and a lot of material goods? What are you lacking that you don’t have that drive? The next verse says, Firmly established and vigorous Te, power, virtue, goodness, appears unsteady, flimsy, forced—like a stuck door. Now, we could also interpret that to mean that we are not faithful in our righteousness. We act righteously, or are in the glory beam and doing God’s work, but then we fall out, and then we have to force our way back into that glory beam, not because it is rejecting us, but because we have stumbled and fallen away. So, we have to come back to it, and the pictogram is forcing a stuck door open. The next verse says, Genuine, solid, substantial, reality, truth, and virtue, seems fluid, unsubstantial, uncertain, faded. This is because we’re living in the world, and it has different values, demiurgic values, than the Father and the pleroma of the Fullness of God. The virtues are the solid and substantial reality. The Father, Son, and Fullness hold and dispense truth and virtue to us freely. But to us, it’s insubstantial. You can’t grab it. You can’t hold on to it. You can’t prove it to an unbeliever. It seems like it’s faded. The next verse is, The supreme—that is, greatest, perfect—region has no corners, boundaries, or angles. It cannot be limited or contained. And that is the Father’s kingdom. That’s the ethereal plane. The Father itself, the Source, is illimitable. It’s formless. It has no corners, no boundaries. It cannot be limited or contained. The next verse says, The supreme—that is, the greatest, the most perfect—vessel, implement, talent, or tool, is slow to mature. I would say that we are the vessels into which the Spirit of the Fullness of God lives, is poured, emanates. We carry it with us, and we are slow to mature. Verse 95 of the Tripartite Tractate says, The seed of promise is guarded for an upcoming mission. The next verse of the Tao Te Ching says, The supreme, greatest, perfect, tone, or sound, or we could say vibratory pattern, lacks sound, is silent, is hard to hear. The Tripartite Tractate refers to the Totalities, which were the first emanations of the Son—before they became the Aeons stacked in their hierarchy, they were called the Totalities of the ALL, and they were simply all of the properties and powers of the Son, sitting there in that starburst pattern—they all acted as one. They were coexistent with the Son. They didn’t have their own identities or egos at that point. The Tripartite Tractate describes the Totalities as the Silences. They do not have voice until they give glory and thereby become self-aware. It was through giving glory to the Son and the Father that the Totalities noticed themselves—that they were each individual properties—and that noticing of themselves immediately caused them to migrate and arrange themselves into their proper positions, places, duties, and names. And that is what I refer to as their egos. And in the beginning there, the egos of the Aeons—it’s all good. It’s merely their designation. It’s not a striving for power or anything. That all comes from the fall. The next verse says, The supreme, greatest, perfect form has no form, material, or substance. Speaking of the illimitable characteristics of the Father. The next verse says, Tao remains hidden, concealed, in the background, without name, nameless. For this exact reason, Tao knows how to, is excellent at, providing support, nourishment, fulfillment, and completion. So this is a paradoxical type of verse, because the Tao, or the Father, the Father’s righteousness, the Fullness of God, remains hidden and concealed in the background. You can’t put a finger on it. It’s hard to name. But because of its nature, it is able to get inside and carry us forward. It is all around us. It’s imminent and eminent, meaning it’s within us and outside of us. By the way, in the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, I described that shape, that basic shape of energy that is this cosmos, as toroidal, the shape of basically a donut or a bagel with a zero-point hole in the middle. So picture a donut with a tiny, tiny center. And I’ll put an illustration in the transcript here. I hypothesize that the bubble called our cosmos is shaped like a torus with a zero point hole in the middle. We are floating in the sea of the Father’s originating consciousness and it not only surrounds us but flows down the funnel into our here and now and out into our material universe. It floats in the sea of consciousness of the Father, both at the tremendous scale—our entire cosmos, our universe is wrapped in a torus—but each one of us, each one of our parts, our cells, our organs, all of the units of consciousness in us, our Self, is shaped like a torus, energetically or spiritually, you could say. And the thing about the torus, when you think about it, if it’s floating in the sea of illimitable consciousness of God, think of it like a torus-shaped bubble. So that means that the center of the torus is completely available to be touched by God, because God pours down the funnel at the top of that donut into that hole, see? And the zero-point field at the middle is here and now, and then it passes down below as energy, as karma, as history. This is Simple Explanation stuff. It’s not exactly out of the Tripartite Tractate, I admit, or out of the Tao Te Ching. This is my gnosis, having to do with toruses. And my long-running blog, A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, and the book of the same name that you can still purchase at Amazon, describes everything in that torus shape and shows you all of the motions and flow of the torus. The reason I bring it up is that if you properly picture the shape of the torus, you can see that the entire exterior is bathed in the Father’s essence. The outside is out there touching the Father. And when you come down into the funnel, which is still outside, it’s still touching the Father, it comes together at the center, at the zero-point field at the middle of the torus. And now, all of a sudden, you’re inside. Personal history (karma) wraps continually around our unit of consciousness, along with our meme bundle (beliefs), and flows back through the funnel at the top to inform our future choices. So this is how the outside of consciousness reaches the inside of each unit of consciousness. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what I’m saying. It’s a big, big concept. And that was verse 41 of the Tao Te Ching. I’ll carry on with another one of these next week if you tell me that you like this. So leave me your comments, and I’ll continue going through the Tao Te Ching in a gnostic, interpretive manner. Please, I’d like to dialogue with you, so leave your comments, questions, anything you have. These are only my gnostic interpretations of the Tao Te Ching and they are not, by any means exhaustive. God bless us all, and Onward and Upward! 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Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Last week I started hopefully a series, of mining gnosis through the Tao Te Ching. <a href="https://gnosticinsights.com/mining-gnosis-through-the-tao-te-ching-verse-40/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Last week’s episode explained the process by which I mine gnosis through the Tao.</a> I’ve been mining that gnosis for well over 20 years without even realizing that it was going to turn into Gnosticism or a Gnostic interpretation of the Tao Te Ching.
The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese manuscript. It’s full of gnosis, and I have found it to be entirely compatible with the gnosis taught through the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi, which is the book of the Nag Hammadi that I use here at Gnostic Insights to share my gnosis with everyone. Today we’re going to do another verse from the Tao Te Ching, the next verse in the book, verse 41.
I’m not going to explain to you again the process by which I do this, but let me begin by reading to you <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Ching-Definitive-Lao-Tzu/dp/158542269X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=8PW242S3W7S6&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JCYSw4WMwkT1lBKGPS2kQ09cv-vXIkUR5PVAkQ6h72ksuPXDwhhnb2YsCw0esfeC2e1wGsYzVNnUTYFd8v_KDa-NWc9cN1NfY_A3KvC6-LDyiwbm14ZGnpK4gIIOHKZCblrY5MkBe8H8P4r2M2aEb5kFMWiuN4LggIYETlkKcIKoJ6ZkFCgDNhnpGy5-zeAOVH2azzeDwQ-QUmRrfd3c21xXVpYxMQZxa_5y0BIojTM.ta6ZRWfLVVKa4xkqPc9cgeeI_TvMlh_sbAV9QFG3gPk&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=jonathan+star+tao+te+ching&amp;qid=1790860674&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C220&amp;sr=8-1" rel="noopener noreferrer">Jonathan Star’s interpretation of the Tao Te Ching</a>, verse 41, and here’s how it goes.

The best seeker hears of Tao. He strives with great effort to know it.
When an average seeker hears of Tao, he thinks of it now and again. When the poorest seeker hears of Tao, he laughs out loud.
Tao is always becoming what we have need for it to become. If it could not do this, it would not be Tao.
There is an old saying: The clear way seems clouded. The straight way seems crooked. The sure way seems unsteady. The greatest power seems weak. The purest white seems tainted. The abundant seems empty. The stable seems shaky. The certain seems false. The great square has no corners. The great vessel is never filled.
A beginner may be clumsy, but after practice, what talent! A large drum may sit silently, but when banged, what noise!
Tao lies hidden, yet it alone is the glorious light of this world.

So that’s verse 41 by Jonathan Star. Now, for comparison’s sake, let’s look at another translation of the Tao Te Ching, this one by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-New-Translation/dp/0300284993/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1G0OQRRNXILU5&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.BJwrICEBViCMYepql1bJgZx1hWTxbBYVie6LXw04AlFpgvMd5s7Fekd10fSTCfcf9Hu4tGYqY4siFHm1HJPl1sqEul3wimhMgRu7_h6gCXCpuSJ8juLVZijkVyoz9h54Njj9GWrmdvimd7-ItgtFJGvN28IjKkpKbuJifFalS_FXRpxvRbs63BXk9Tt0_1UKDN_vghkkqBXTb1_Vuhuf8AmsFazSWw-ng4qkiLIpGUg.ug8JIUQcvcCYw-UUGOPKURfJHie6u9BMm42SWPz3IIs&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=david+bentley+hart+tao+te+ching&amp;qid=1790951367&amp;sprefix=david+bentley+hart+tao+te+ching%2Caps%2C177&amp;sr=8-1" rel="noopener noreferrer">David Bentley Hart from his new book, Tao Te Ching, A New Translation</a>. And thank you very much, Gabriella, one of our followers, who recommended it.

The very best scholar listens to the Way and lives diligently in accord with it. The scholar of middling gifts listens to the Way, at one moment believing, at another losing faith. The poorest scholar listens to the Way and finds it risible. Then again, if he did not laugh at it, it would not really be the Way.
These then be our maxims: The way of enlightenment seems dim and obscure. Every advance along the Way seems like a retreat. The easy level path seems arduous and uneven. The most exalted power seems like a plunging chasm. The purest clarity seems tarnished and dark. The most abundant power seems impoverished. The most formidable power seems like frailty. What is most substantial seems fluid and inconstant. The ideal square has no corners. The finest vessel takes till evening to perfect. The sweetest melody is hushed and tenuous. The perfect form has no shape. 
The way is hidden and nameless. Yet, for just this reason, the Way knows how to nourish and fulfill.

So that’s verse 41, interpreted by David Bentley Hart.
Now I’m going to share with you my interpretation of verse 41. And remember, all of these interpretations come from a myriad of choices, because we’re dealing with pictograms. And you can interpret the pictogram in many, many ways. I’m going to go through verse 41 line by line, pictogram by pictogram, and interpret it in a more obviously Gnostic type of way.

The best, wisest, highest, student or type of person, hears Tao earnestly, attentively, with devotion, and lives in accordance with it, practices with diligence. The average, middle type of person hears about Tao and sometimes follows, sometimes believes, and sometimes doubts, sometimes loses it. The lesser, lowest, inferior type of person hears about Tao and ridicules it, laughs out loud. If they did not laugh, it would not be thusly the Tao.

Now, before going on, let me explain that Tao means the Way, the path, and it is the Way of the Father. It is the path of glory.
The Tao is the emanation of what we call the Father in Gnosticism. So whenever the Tao Te Ching speaks of Tao, think of it as the word of God, or the Way of the Father. And these first three stanzas described the three types of human, and interestingly enough, these exact three types of humans appear throughout Gnosticism.
The Tripartite Tractate describes these three types of humans in verses 98 through 100.
The best, wisest, highest type of person is called the pneumatic, P-N-E-U-M-A-T-I-C, also interpreted as the right ones. The pneumatic, those of God, are on the right. Those of the good thought, workers and servants of the Father, of the Father’s beauty and rest.
The average middle type of person, as it says in the Tao, maps to what in Gnosticism we call the psychic, the fiery ones, the middle ones. They are characterized by a lust for power and ambition, and that is most humans. That’s from verse 100.
And the lesser, the lowest, the inferior type of person, who laughs at Tao and ridicules it, they are referred to as the hylic, the left, the dark ones, the last. And they are brought forth by envy and jealousy. That’s verse 100.
So, in other words, those who ridicule the path, who ridicule the Father—it’s their envy and jealousy that pulls them down.
The middle type, the psychic, the fiery ones, the middle ones, they are characterized by emotion. They’re emotional. And this emotion brings them to a lust for power and ambition, because the emotions are resonating to the fallen ego, or the ruler of this world, the demiurge. And all of the emotions that get stirred up down here in the cosmos by the demiurge and the archons, they are meant to engage the majority of humans in fighting each other in the never-ending war for power and control, because of their ambition, and just being stirred up and upset all the time.
The fewest type is the pneumatic, and those are the teachers of the Word of God, the saints, the prophets, the children of God in the truest sense, in that they have the heart of God, the heart of the Father. They’re not doing this ritualistically or rule-bound. They’re not hypocritically pretending to be good moral people. They are good moral people, and that’s how they view the world, through the eyes of the Father. Carrying on now in verse 41,

Therefore, constructive sayings, proverbs, and maxims, such as the following: The enlightened Tao is the path to illumination, seems obscure, dark, and dull. Advancement toward Tao seems like, or resembles, retreat, falling backwards.

And in a Gnostic way, we would say that what the seeker is retreating from, the retreat, the falling backward, is from worldly concerns and patterns. Because in order to follow the Way, you need to disengage from the world. The Bible says we are in the world, but not of the world.
So, it’s like water and oil—they can be in the same bucket, but they do not mix. The next verse says,

The straight and smooth Tao, path or Way, seems like, resembles, roughness—uneven, and difficult.

I interpret this to mean that the actual path of Tao, the Way of God, the Way of the Father, the Way of glory, the glory beam, is straight, but it seems difficult, uneven. The path of glory coming down from above is true and straight and perfect, but our attempts to walk it are difficult. The next line is,

The highest, exalted, superior Te—that’s power or virtue.

It’s in the title of the book, the Tao Te Ching.

The Way of Virtue resembles an empty chasm.

So, the virtue around us in the world is like a vacuum. It’s an emptiness, it’s a chasm. And I would say from a Gnostic point of view that that is because the world is full of the Demiurge. We second-order powers were sent here to bring the love, consciousness, and life of the Father into this chasm. So, the Way of Te is the Way that we are to behave as second-order powers, spreading love and consciousness.
Also concerning this idea that the highest Te seems empty, in the Tripartite Tractate, verses 59-65, it says, describing the Father’s relationship to the Totalities, that have been emanated from the Son–so, this is way upstream, this is before any humans, before any second-order powers, even at the very inception of the flowering of the Father into the fullness of consciousness that comes down to us—the Father doesn’t reveal Himself to the Totalities, yet they yearn for Him. What they know of the Father is but a trace of Him, revealed as a pleasant odor. So, the Father does not reveal Himself to the Totalities, which are the Totalities of the variables of the Son, all of the properties of the Son, but yet they seek the Father, like they’re pulled into a vacuum. The Father doesn’t reveal Himself, but, like a beautiful aroma, they long to reunite with the Source. It’s another way of looking at that verse. Carrying on with verse 41.

Most perfect and pure clarity, innocence, looks like, or appears, sullied, tarnished, disgraceful.

That is puzzling, isn’t it? I think it’s because those who actually express the path of Tao, or the Way of the Father, righteousness, they can be painted by others as disgraceful, tarnished, sullied. Their motives are denigrated. They’re made fun of, in the manner that the Hylics make fun of righteousness itself. So, even if you are passing through this world in a perfect and pure and innocent manner, you will look to others tarnished, disgraceful. The next verse says,

The most abundant, overflowing, far-reaching Te, which is power and virtue, appears insufficient, defective, lacking.

So, this is saying that the most abundant, glorious, righteous path that you may be on seems like it’s not enough, and it seems like it’s lacking something. I mean, after all, where’s your ambition to succeed? Where’s your ambition to acquire a big house and a lot of material goods? What are you lacking that you don’t have that drive? The next verse says,

Firmly established and vigorous Te, power, virtue, goodness, appears unsteady, flimsy, forced—like a stuck door.

Now, we could also interpret that to mean that we are not faithful in our righteousness. We act righteously, or are in the glory beam and doing God’s work, but then we fall out, and then we have to force our way back into that glory beam, not because it is rejecting us, but because we have stumbled and fallen away. So, we have to come back to it, and the pictogram is forcing a stuck door open. The next verse says,

Genuine, solid, substantial, reality, truth, and virtue, seems fluid, unsubstantial, uncertain, faded.

This is because we’re living in the world, and it has different values, demiurgic values, than the Father and the pleroma of the Fullness of God. The virtues are the solid and substantial reality. The Father, Son, and Fullness hold and dispense truth and virtue to us freely. But to us, it’s insubstantial. You can’t grab it. You can’t hold on to it. You can’t prove it to an unbeliever. It seems like it’s faded. The next verse is,

The supreme—that is, greatest, perfect—region has no corners, boundaries, or angles. It cannot be limited or contained.

And that is the Father’s kingdom. That’s the ethereal plane. The Father itself, the Source, is illimitable. It’s formless. It has no corners, no boundaries. It cannot be limited or contained. The next verse says,

The supreme—that is, the greatest, the most perfect—vessel, implement, talent, or tool, is slow to mature.

I would say that we are the vessels into which the Spirit of the Fullness of God lives, is poured, emanates. We carry it with us, and we are slow to mature. Verse 95 of the Tripartite Tractate says,

The seed of promise is guarded for an upcoming mission.

The next verse of the Tao Te Ching says,

The supreme, greatest, perfect, tone, or sound, or we could say vibratory pattern, lacks sound, is silent, is hard to hear.

The Tripartite Tractate refers to the Totalities, which were the first emanations of the Son—before they became the Aeons stacked in their hierarchy, they were called the Totalities of the ALL, and they were simply all of the properties and powers of the Son, sitting there in that starburst pattern—they all acted as one. They were coexistent with the Son. They didn’t have their own identities or egos at that point. The Tripartite Tractate describes the Totalities as the Silences. They do not have voice until they give glory and thereby become self-aware.
It was through giving glory to the Son and the Father that the Totalities noticed themselves—that they were each individual properties—and that noticing of themselves immediately caused them to migrate and arrange themselves into their proper positions, places, duties, and names. And that is what I refer to as their egos. And in the beginning there, the egos of the Aeons—it’s all good. It’s merely their designation. It’s not a striving for power or anything. That all comes from the fall. The next verse says,

The supreme, greatest, perfect form has no form, material, or substance.

Speaking of the illimitable characteristics of the Father. The next verse says,

Tao remains hidden, concealed, in the background, without name, nameless. For this exact reason, Tao knows how to, is excellent at, providing support, nourishment, fulfillment, and completion.

So this is a paradoxical type of verse, because the Tao, or the Father, the Father’s righteousness, the Fullness of God, remains hidden and concealed in the background. You can’t put a finger on it. It’s hard to name. But because of its nature, it is able to get inside and carry us forward. It is all around us. It’s imminent and eminent, meaning it’s within us and outside of us.
By the way, in the Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, I described that shape, that basic shape of energy that is this cosmos, as toroidal, the shape of basically a donut or a bagel with a zero-point hole in the middle. So picture a donut with a tiny, tiny center. And I’ll put an illustration in the transcript here.
I hypothesize that the bubble called our cosmos is shaped like a torus with a zero point hole in the middle. We are floating in the sea of the Father’s originating consciousness and it not only surrounds us but flows down the funnel into our here and now and out into our material universe.
It floats in the sea of consciousness of the Father, both at the tremendous scale—our entire cosmos, our universe is wrapped in a torus—but each one of us, each one of our parts, our cells, our organs, all of the units of consciousness in us, our Self, is shaped like a torus, energetically or spiritually, you could say.
And the thing about the torus, when you think about it, if it’s floating in the sea of illimitable consciousness of God, think of it like a torus-shaped bubble. So that means that the center of the torus is completely available to be touched by God, because God pours down the funnel at the top of that donut into that hole, see? And the zero-point field at the middle is here and now, and then it passes down below as energy, as karma, as history.
This is Simple Explanation stuff. It’s not exactly out of the Tripartite Tractate, I admit, or out of the Tao Te Ching. This is my gnosis, having to do with toruses. And <a href="https://asimpleexplanation.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-simple-explanation-of-fractals.html" rel="noopener noreferrer">my long-running blog, A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything</a>, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Explanation-Absolutely-Everything-Conscious/dp/B08JB5WQP7/ref=sr_1_2?crid=O0F6LO2WWPH6&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.XdZirVIgYnGshUkLDLM4cH7_E2xhOh3j93qPAMcCLe4Gevvoh6PqZSnNTKy-5UIkrglvxOnoeJ9G4TnhYMwrOASbbnZowrVmCEJlSyS4FcBO0ZYySYUEIjjQ8ejiRL6-6wU-cVMWb-1Svrz00a5B4eCb3js5EOpFnvebXLWarHXe8aQJpIds8YiNwuaPrBnf.YXftkEl0nr-XVZrTMpt3sTiuD-VbCYPs0SilMLMtcBE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=a+simple+explanation+of+absolutely+everything&amp;qid=1790869222&amp;sprefix=a+simple+explanation+of+absol%2Caps%2C182&amp;sr=8-2" rel="noopener noreferrer">the book of the same name</a> that you can still purchase at Amazon, describes everything in that torus shape and shows you all of the motions and flow of the torus.
The reason I bring it up is that if you properly picture the shape of the torus, you can see that the entire exterior is bathed in the Father’s essence. The outside is out there touching the Father. And when you come down into the funnel, which is still outside, it’s still touching the Father, it comes together at the center, at the zero-point field at the middle of the torus. And now, all of a sudden, you’re inside.
Personal history (karma) wraps continually around our unit of consciousness, along with our meme bundle (beliefs), and flows back through the funnel at the top to inform our future choices.
So this is how the outside of consciousness reaches the inside of each unit of consciousness. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what I’m saying. It’s a big, big concept.
And that was verse 41 of the Tao Te Ching. I’ll carry on with another one of these next week if you tell me that you like this.
So leave me your comments, and I’ll continue going through the Tao Te Ching in a gnostic, interpretive manner. Please, I’d like to dialogue with you, so leave your comments, questions, anything you have. These are only my gnostic interpretations of the Tao Te Ching and they are not, by any means exhaustive.
God bless us all, and Onward and Upward!
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Mining Gnosis Through the Tao Te Ching–verse 41

Reincarnations are not random events, but the continuation of karmically-mandated cycles of consequence that do not end with death. Death breaks the bonds of material instantiation, but not its karmic pattern. The freed Self continues its existence at a non-material level until its karmic pattern attaches to a newly instantiating Second Order creature, at which time it is born again.

Reincarnations are not random events, but the continuation of karmically-mandated cycles of consequence that do not end with death. Death breaks the bonds of material instantiation, but not its karmic pattern. The freed Self continues its existence at a non-material level until its karmic pattern attaches to a newly instantiating Second Order creature, at which time it is born again.

Reincarnations are not random events, but the continuation of karmically-mandated cycles of consequence that do not end with death. Death breaks the bonds of material instantiation, but not its karmic pattern. The freed Self continues its existence at a non-material level until its karmic pattern attaches to a&nbsp;newly instantiating Second Order creature, at which time it is born again.

A Simple Model of Reincarnation

Once you acquire a meme, it becomes part of your unique vibratory bundle. If you do not wish to continue holding that meme in your personal bundle of strings and chords, you need to detach that meme from your bundle.

Once you acquire a meme, it becomes part of your unique vibratory bundle. If you do not wish to continue holding that meme in your personal bundle of strings and chords, you need to detach that meme from your bundle.

Once you acquire a meme, it becomes&nbsp;part of your unique vibratory bundle. If you do not wish to continue holding that meme in your personal bundle of strings and chords,&nbsp;you need to detach that meme from your bundle.

Dropping Unwanted Memes

What is the basic truth that all religious traditions share when you strip away their superfluous memes?

What is the basic truth that all religious traditions share when you strip away their superfluous memes?

What is the basic truth that all religious traditions share when you strip away their superfluous memes?

Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy

Archons are forces of the deficiency that feed on negativity. Created by the Demiurge as attack soldiers in the never-ending war, archons seek to lead us astray and create misery.

Archons are forces of the deficiency that feed on negativity. Created by the Demiurge as attack soldiers in the never-ending war, archons seek to lead us astray and create misery.

Archons are forces of the deficiency that feed on negativity. Created by the Demiurge as attack soldiers in the never-ending war, archons seek to lead us astray and create misery.

Archons of the Deficiency

Every unit of consciousness has the free will to fulfill or contradict its responsibilities. The more complex the unit of consciousness, the more opportunities it has to exercise free will. Despite the opportunities for free will, most units of consciousness choose to do their part and operate according to plan.

Every unit of consciousness has the free will to fulfill or contradict its responsibilities. The more complex the unit of consciousness, the more opportunities it has to exercise free will. Despite the opportunities for free will, most units of consciousness choose to do their part and operate according to plan.

Every unit of consciousness has the free will to fulfill or contradict its responsibilities. The more complex the unit of consciousness, the more opportunities it has to exercise free will. Despite the opportunities for free will, most units of consciousness choose to do their part and operate according to plan.

Consciousness and Free Will

Our lives are reenactments of dramas written long before our births, and we find ourselves playing out scenes populated by archetypal characters and complex fractal stories.

Our lives are reenactments of dramas written long before our births, and we find ourselves playing out scenes populated by archetypal characters and complex fractal stories.

Our lives are reenactments of dramas written long before our births, and we find ourselves playing out scenes populated by archetypal characters and complex fractal stories.

Archetypes and Complex Fractals

Explore this ancient, epic poem from the Nag Hammadi library through a full reading followed by discussion.

Explore this ancient, epic poem from the Nag Hammadi library through a full reading followed by discussion.

Explore this ancient, epic poem from the Nag Hammadi library through a full reading followed by discussion.

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

For most people, the answer to "who am I?" is that I am my self-aware sense of "me" encased in this body of mine. Yes, we are that, but we are also the things we love and hate, plus the record of our actions in this world, overlaid upon a perfect fractal echo of God's mind.

For most people, the answer to "who am I?" is that I am my self-aware sense of "me" encased in this body of mine. Yes, we are that, but we are also the things we love and hate, plus the record of our actions in this world, overlaid upon a perfect fractal echo of God's mind.

For most people, the answer to "who am I?" is that I am my self-aware sense of "me" encased in this body of mine. Yes, we are that, but we are also the things we love and hate, plus the record of our actions in this world, overlaid upon a perfect fractal echo of God's mind.&nbsp;

I Am Not Me–The Self

A tour of exoteric and esoteric religious memes from around the world. What do they have in common, and how do they differ?

A tour of exoteric and esoteric religious memes from around the world. What do they have in common, and how do they differ?

A tour of exoteric and esoteric religious memes from around the world. What do they have in common, and how do they differ?

A Simple Model of Memes, Pt. 2–Religious Memes

Memes are the cultural expressions of societies, and their content is information. Memes, in other words, are the "stuff" of symbolic thought. Everyone holds their own personal bundle of memes tightly against their soul, and these memes influence every aspect of our lives.

Memes are the cultural expressions of societies, and their content is information. Memes, in other words, are the "stuff" of symbolic thought. Everyone holds their own personal bundle of memes tightly against their soul, and these memes influence every aspect of our lives.

Memes are the cultural expressions of societies, and their content is information. Memes, in other words, are the "stuff" of symbolic thought. Everyone holds their own personal bundle of memes tightly against their soul, and these memes influence every aspect of our lives.

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