Fgs - Blog Posts

"The sacred story of Sophia begins at one moment in endless, measureless time, but not the first moment of the creation of the Universe. This term Universe, capitalized, refers to the totality of galaxies in the immeasurable matrix of space-time. The Universe already exists when Sophia's story begins, and it has never not been there. There is no moment when it arose, nor will there ever be a moment when it ceases to be. There is no big bang in the Gnostic vision, nor in its Hindu, Tantric, and Buddhist counterparts where emanation and mirroring are the dynamic principles that operate throughout the cosmos and within the human psyche: emanation, not creation; mirroring, not cause and effect. The Eternal Ground is immutable but the Universe is inherently unstable, perpetually in flux, its contents ever changing, morphing, cycling. Life is a mystery of ceaseless, seamless becoming, a living dream that constantly shifts from one scene to another, every event pivoting on the timeless moment, Now.

What changes in the Universe is not the power source, but the conditions for the manifestation of that mysterious sourcing power. "Eternity is in love with the productions of time," said the mystic poet William Blake. Every moment holds the exciting possibility that a singularity will emerge from the depths of the Eternal Now. Novelty will appear and ripple through the manifest worlds.

The Universe arises as a material apparition from a hidden power source, a foundation awareness that never discloses itself directly: the Originator. In Dzogchen the foundation awareness is called rigpa, in Hindu Tantra, parasamvit, in the Gnostic materials, pronoia. (I cite these parallels, not to display my dubious erudition, but to stress that Gnostic thought is not a freak, isolated phenomenon, as most religious scholars take it to be.)

Tantric metaphysical teachings tell us that the innate inclination of the sourcing power is to veil itself so that it can appear as other than what it is. Its self-veiling power is called maya. Wrongly considered to mean illusion, maya is in reality the power by which the foundation awareness, which stands beyond time, space, and matter, assumes manifold appearances and acts in time and space, assuming material form. Paradoxically, it hides in order to be revealed. The foundation awareness does not confine itself in the acts and appearances it manifests, but operates through them. The material apparitions it produces, including stars, planets, human beings, and microbes, are real and alive, not illusory. Gnostics did not teach that the material world is an illusion, but, as we shall see, they warned that there is an iilusionary factor working in the cosmos and in the human mind, correlatively, that causes us to misperceive the world order and lose our place in it. This is the Archontic factor that emerges in episode 4 of the sacred story."

~ John Lamb Lash, 'Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology and the Future of Belief'

Artwork:  'On the Edge of Harmony by Cameron Gray