0412 A couple of more steps are needed before I arrive at the message underlying the word “Gnosticism”.
0413 First, I need to place the distortion back into the personal-level dyad of the Gnostic origin myth.
0414 My own experiences of the living-ness of my body inform my Self. My Self is not material. My Self is relational. My Self answers the question: Who am I?
0415 It does so by saying, “I like this. I do not like that. I feel this. I feel that.”
0416 My ego is responsible for my Self. My ego acts in the Name of my Self. My ego may reduce my Self to a purely material concern: my body. My ego claims to have an answer to the question: Who am I?
0417 My superego is the repository of social norms that guide my ego in its concern for my material well-being.
In fact, my superego expresses more. I know this because my superego will often contain divine commands, such as the Mosaic 10 commandments.
0418 The superego holds aphorisms that guide the ego.
The superego cannot be reduced to social norms, traditions, and doctrines, even though it contains them. Similarly, a church contains more than its written texts. If a church only contained books, then it would be less than a church.
0419 The superego is the temple of the ego. The ego serves both material and spiritual concerns. The superego holds the traditions that animate those spiritual concerns.
Spiritual concerns may integrate with material concerns. That is the nature of Yaltabaoth. When material concerns substitute for spiritual concerns, idolatry follows.
0420 For type 1 Gnosticism, Yaltabaoth matches sovereign power.
In ancient societies, the sovereign was the intermediary between the divine builder gods and the folk. The priests attended to the material concerns of the builder gods (that is, the upkeep of the temples) and the spiritual concerns of both sovereign and folk.
0421When the sovereign and folk worked courageously and ferociously, like a lion, the temples rose.
When the sovereign and folk saw one another as serpents, the temples crumbled.
0422 The excess and lack must be attributed to the realm of possibility. “It” (er… I meant to say “id”) must be the potential of ‘something’ in the normal context of the superego.
0423 In the force field of the material and the immaterial, the id divides into two rivers. One is the reality principle. The other is the so-called “the death wish”.
Oh, it is not really a death wish. It is a Self-wish.
0424 Theoretically, the personal level does not fall apart. The reality principle may compensate and accommodate the Self-wish. After all, both idreal and idfantasy belong to the realm of possibility. In the category of firstness, contradictions are allowed.
0425 The key is the superego. The superego’s traditions must be rich enough to encourage the ego to develop, train and channel the Self.
0426 This cannot be the case after Yaltabaoth has entered the serpent phase.
In the snake phase, the ego is only worried about surviving increasingly harsh laws and norms.
0427 What happens?
Sophia steps in and offers another normal context. She offers secret knowledge.
0428 A normal context follows the logic of thirdness.
What is the nature of the category of thirdness?
Thirdness is exclusive.
0429 The addition of gnosis adds a second normal context. It creates a separate exclusive domain that applies to immaterial concerns.
0430 This would be fine if the material and the immaterial aspects of a person could be separated, but they cannot.
0431 So, the personal level becomes a structure where two nested forms intersect in the realm of actuality.
0432 The ego and the Self cannot be separated.
The superego and gnosis are exclusive. So, the ego and the Self becomes a single site of conflict. The Self-wish and the reality principle support two conflicting actualities.
0433 The question becomes: What is the one actuality holding these two conflicting actualities.
One person contains the ego and the Self. The person is a single actuality filled with conflict.
0434 This is the message underlying the word “Gnosticism”.
The person strives to resolve this tension, induced by the distorting field of the material and immaterial, then locked with the promise of secret knowledge.