Kenosis to Gnosis
Hear the silence
The Bible, the Gnostic gospels and the Hermetica, has one thing coming up again and again in all these books. That was how superior the child was and how everyone needs to become a child. The reason for this is because the child is the flesh that is closest to being spiritual, it is less polarized and the child is much more in connection with the spirit. In the material world where everyone is in a state of ignorance, people identify themselves by their race, ethnicity, sexuality, country, ideology, religion, their social status etc. They identify themselves by anything except themselves, or who they were before they entered their bodies. The spiritual teachers keep saying how important it is to become the true self again and the best way to do that is to become the child again and to undo their flesh. It's interesting that children are considered the least in any society by most people and society is designed to be as fleshy as possible to the detriment of the spirit. Most of the civil rights movements are focused on the flesh, whether it's skin color, religion, sex, orientation etc. Those things are fleshy rights and they are never focused on the true self. People shouldn't talk about black rights, women's rights, gay rights, religious rights, workers rights etc. Those things are all focused on the flesh and on labels. Those things are exclusionary in nature and promote more polarization rather than unity and people who promote fleshy rights are promoting and reinforcing illusions and labels. The only legitimate rights are human rights. The spiritual teachers only focus on the spirit and they never identity people by their flesh and labels. These people are clearly saying that the child is the right thing to be and they aren't concerned with anything other than that. The child is the higher state of consciousness and people who operate at a higher state of consciousness go into a permanent juvenile state. This passage from the Gospel of Philip is a good description of someone who becomes a child,
(64: 10) The Lord said, "Blessed is he who is before he came into being. For he who is, has been and shall be."
The Dialouge of the Savior (35) And to someone who will not know the [root] of all things, they remain hidden. Someone who will not know the root of wickedness is no stranger to it. Who ever will not understand how he came will not understand how he will go,
The Gospel of Thomas
(4) Jesus said, "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same."
Be aware that when Jesus saids that "many who are first will become last", he doesn't mean that the people who are considered first in society will become poor, powerless and destitute, because Jesus specificly saids that the first and last are one and the same. Jesus is referring to polarisation and cycles, which are a by product of polarisation. A child is in a less polarised state than an adult is and that is why Jesus gives children more praise than anyone else. Because children are in a less polarised state, they remember the place of life more than anyone else. Polarisation is what causes someone to forget what the place of life is and become more and more worldly and they become more and more polarised with age. There will come a time when polarisation and it's by product, time, will become a singularity.
(22) Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, "These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom." They said to him, "Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."
It is interesting that the first part is about children having the best chance of experiencing heaven or the spirit world and the second part goes into obvious references to the subject of polarisation. Children are in a less polarised state than adults are and that is why Jesus gives them the most praise. Someone that becomes less polarised becomes more childlike and they start remembering who they originally were
(37) His disciples said, "When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" Jesus said, "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and pace them under your feet like little children and tread of them, then will you see the son of the living one, and you will not be afraid."
Jesus may have been referring to the fact that Adam and Eve did not wear any clothes before the Fall into a state of polarisation. The first thing thing that Adam and Eve did after they ate the fruit from The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil or polarisation, was to sew fig leaves together and make lioncloths for themselves. Jesus links what happened in the Garden of Eden and the Fall into polarisation with children, who are in a less polarised state. Jesus is saying that people need to become less polarised like children to return to the original state that humans were in before the Fall. The clothes in the Garden of Eden can represent the flesh as well. Jesus is saying take off the flesh and become the soul again.
(46) Jesus said, "Among those born of women, from Adam until John the Baptist, there is no one so superior to John the Baptist that his eyes should not be lowered before him. Yet I have said, whichever one of you comes to be a child will be acquainted with the kingdom and will become superior to John.
This statement makes it very clear that Jesus considers children to be superior to anyone else, even John the Baptist, who was his right hand man, and that people need to go into a child like state in order to experience the kingdom of Heaven or the real world or themselves. Children are in a less polarised and fleshy state than adults are and they are less programmed with a fake view of who they are compared to adults. Children are more in touch with their true selves and they havn't devoloped a phoney, artificial self that society, religion, government etc, create for the individual over time. The illusions that create the phoney, artificial self are based on polarisation. Polarisation is the foundation of the phoney, Matrix world.
The Gospel of Truth
(19: 15) In schools he appeared and he spoke the word as a teacher. There came the men wise in their own estimatimation, putting him to the test. But he confounded them because they were foolish. They hated him because they were not really wise. After all these, there came the little children also, those to whom the knowledge of the Father belongs. Having been strengthened, they learned about the impressions of the Father. They knew, they were known; they were glorified.
The first part is about how the intellectuals and the religious leaders couldn't understand what Jesus was saying, because they operate in an unbalanced left brain way of thinking. The second part saids that children are better able to comprehend the teachings of Jesus because they are in a less polarised state of mind than the intellectuals and the religious leaders, ie, the wise fools. Children are less programmed and the illusion of polarisation isn't so strong in them. There is a message here to become like children, as it is said in other parts of the Gnostic gospels and the Bible, in order to understand God, their true selves and the universe or the totality.
The Gospel of Philip
(81: 10) To the slaves he will give only the elementary lessons, to the children he will give the complete instruction.
By slaves he means those who are slaves to their flesh and the physical world. The slave is someone who is deep within the illusions and programming of the world. They can only be given the very basics, because either they will not understand the full teaching or they will reject it because of their programming. In the second part, he mentions that children will be given the full teachings that can't be given to the slaves. Someone who is in a more unified, spiritual state of mind and who is in touch with their true selves will be much more receptive to the more advanced spiritual teachings than people who aren't. Jesus favoured children more than anyone else for reasons already stated here and Jesus even called his disciples children, even though they were fully grown men, which implies that the word children is not literal but describes a state of mind that isn't based on the illusions, programming and ignorance of this world. In Mark 10: 24, the Bible saids, "The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." The disciples of Jesus were children who received the complete instruction.
The Gospel of Matthew
11:25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
This passage is similar to the two passages from the two passages from the Gnostic gospels above. The children Jesus is referring to in this passage are those people who are less polarized, are less fleshy and who are more in touch with their spirits.
18:1At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
2 He called a little child and had him stand among them. 3 And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5“And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. 6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
19:14 Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
The Gospel of Mark
7:27 “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”
28 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs."
Most people fail to see the significance of this particular passage. It may sound like Jesus was being rude to her by calling her a dog, but what he was really saying is that there are children and there are animals, those are the two groups that exist on this Earth. If people aren't like a child, in a non polarised state of being and remembering who they are, they are animals, who have no intelligence, wisdom and no knowledge of who they are. They operate from their base instincts and that is why Jesus called her a dog. The food for the children is the higher level of knowledge and it is not meant for those at a lower level of consciousness. This passage is similar to what Jesus said in Matthew 7:6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces."
In the New Testament Jesus Christ called himself the Son of God and the Son of Man, so he was the son of the divine and the son of the material. He was the unity of the above and the below, of the Heavens and the Earth. The child is the product of the union of two polar opposites and so contains them both.
Most people don't understand the significance of being both the son of the higher of the higher and the son of the lower. The unity of both creates a gateway between worlds and Jesus Christ said he was the gate and that nobody would enter Heaven without passing through that gate which is the unity, or the cancellation of polar opposites. This was explained in a lot of detail on the page called The Axis of the Universe.
The passage in Matthew 7:13 which says, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it", has new meaning if the narrow gate that few find is looked at as a dot. Very few people enter through the dot and only exist on the circumference. The statement by Jesus Christ that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven has the same meaning. The more of the world someone is, the more they are weighed down in the circumference and cannot enter through the narrow gate. In a centrifuge it is very hard for an object that is on the circumference to get to the center because of the artificial gravity holding it down. It is like that with this world, the more of it someone has, the harder it is to get off the circumference and move into the center of reality. If someone wants to release himself from the circumference then he has to lighten himself of the world so that he isn't weighed down, or the wheel can stop turning altogether which would effectively make the whole wheel, also called the empty point, like the center by being in a state of rest.
Being centered and being still is the key to entering through the narrow gate as meditation achieves.
In John 10:1-18 Jesus Christ calls himself the gate that his followers enter and all those who don't enter by the gate are frauds, "Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
This gate is the same one that was mentioned in Matthew 7:13 and entering it is the path to life. All the frauds, false prophets, con artists etc, don't have that connection with the higher realm that is accessed through that narrow gate and so cannot lead the sheep to the pastures of life. They will only lead the sheep to the abattoir in the place of death.
In John 14:6 Jesus Christ makes another statement clearly saying that he is the gate that connects with Heaven and Earth, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." The way that he talks about is the way of the point and it is the truth compared with the empty point that is the circumference and this truth is the real life of the spirit. Knowing the gate to the higher world is the Gnosis of God or the point.
The passage in Matthew 19:24 is also talking about the gateway between worlds, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
A concept that is related to the child is androgyny that appears in numerous places in The Hermetica and the Nag Hammadi Library.
In The Hermetica the original higher level of creation were androgynous, as stated in numerous places within it, "although man is above the cosmic framework, he became a slave within it. He is androgyne because he comes from an androgyne father, and he never sleeps because he comes from one who is sleepless. <Yet love and sleep are his> masters." "All living things, which had been androgyne, were sundered into two parts - humans along with them - and part of them became male, part likewise female."
Another passage in The Hermetica, in Asclepius, says this, "Do you say that god is of both sexes, Trismegistus?" "Not only god, Asclepius, but all things ensouled and soulless, for it is impossible for any of the things that are to be infertile." That last statement, which is saying that everything is fertile, means that everything has a polar opposite or an anti thing. As explained on The Axis of the Universe page and on this video everything in the Universe is a vibration, meaning that everything essentially has an up and down part to them.
The Gnostics interpreted the story of Adam and Eve in a much different way that the Jews and Christians did. As explained on A Real Creation Theory page Adam, before he was split, was not subject to death and degeneration when he was both himself and Eve. From the Gospel of Philip, "When Eve was still in Adam death did not exist. When she was separated from him death came into being. If he enters again and attains his former self, death will be no more." "If the woman had not separated from the man, she should not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this Christ came to repair the separation which was from the beginning and again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the separation and unite them."
The main reason for death is that the cycle of life must go back to its origin and then to the other side in order to maintain a balance. The Law of Balance therefore is the main reason for death. The only way around that is to always be in the center so that the cycle of life doesn't need to go down to the other side. This is what the child essentially is. Be a child and the Law of Balance won't act like the Grim Reaper inverting life.
In the Death card of the Tarot, the three adults are either dead, pleading or shunning Death. Only the child in that card is looking at it with enthusiasm. The child, representing innocence, doesn't need to fear death unlike the adults. One way to look at the Death card is to think of Death in the black armor as being the Black Phase of Alchemy, which is about breaking down a person. The white horse is comparable to the White Phase of Alchemy which is about purification once the breakdown has happened. The child in this picture is the Philosophical Child that is the end result, making the Death card a very positive card.
This statement from A Complete Idiot's Guide to Alchemy, by Dennis William Hauck, sums up quite well the Philosopher's Child, "The primary symbol of successful fermentation is a curious two-headed human figure known as the Rebis, which is from the Latin phrase res bina, meaning “a double thing.” The Rebis is usually depicted as a winged hermaphrodite with a male head on its right and a female head on its left and represents the Philosopher’s Child resulting from the union of the King and Queen that took place during the conjunction phase."
Yes, Alchemy preaches the child and androgyny as well, much like the other Alexandrian religions of Hermeticism and gnosticism.
In this picture of the Rebis from Splendor Solis, attributed to Solomon Trismosing in 1582, the Rebis is shown as having a man and woman's head, with the Red and White phases of Alchemy represented as two wings. The round thing the Rebis has is the Prima Materia, or First Matter, which is the start of the Great Work of Alchemy and is the basis of all matter and consequently the entire Universe. The Rebis is the one who is able to use it being a perfected creator now. The black, white and red circles around the Prima Materia are the three phases of Alchemy to emerge out of the Prima Materia. The Prima Materia is a mirror that reflects the entire landscape shown in this picture and it is the unexpanded original state of all matter. The egg the Rebis is holding represents the four elements of the egg combining to form the chick which is the fifth element. This picture shows that only the Androgynous Rebis can hold, or possess, the Prima Materia and the Philosopher's Stone, since the Rebis is the final outcome of the Great Work.
An hour glass has the shape of an infinity loop if a cross section were made of it. Imagine the sands of time being like the lifeforce and each side as being one of the polarities. The sands of time fill up one end but they want to flow into the other end that is empty of them. This is like the decline of the physical body over time as the lifeforce starts leeching out of it. Gravity is the primordial movement of the Universe and the thing that causes gravity is the Universe wanting to cancel itself out. All matter is attracted to the thing that will cancel it out if it was strong enough. The lifeforce is attracted to the other side and it wants to be in that cancelled out state as far as matter is concerned. Be in the center and the lifeforce doesn't drain out of the body of light. Keep that hour glass switching from one end to the other and life will be the subject to cycles of growth and decline back into the middle again.
Remember the statement from The Gospel of Thomas, "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same." Also this statement from Andrew Chumbly in Qutub has a similar meaning, "Our First Words — they do but echo That which we utter as we die." The old man is death and the child rebirth and they both speak the same language which is Silence that is the Word that creates.
If life is a cycle then it has to go the other way. This picture shows a clear cycle developing with the death and rebirth being at the center between the adults. Death and rebirth go hand in hand with each other.
As Dennis William Hauck states about the darkness of the Black Phase of Alchemy, "Unlike the hopeless blackness of Nigredo, the alchemists considered the blackness of putrefaction to be a pregnant darkness that would lead to the birth of the Philosopher’s Child."
The Philosopher's Child is an illuminated being, being both of man and woman, but illumination if born in darkness. Just like a butterfly is born in the chrysalis, a seed is born in the darkness of the ground or the light of the Sun being born in the darkness of its center where fusion occurs. Even the entire Universe had a 200 million year dark age where the first stars and galaxies started forming. Illumination and brilliance always emerge from the darkness. The Nigredo stage of Alchemy is in reality where things are born, not so much dying. The real death is not being reborn. Jesus Christ didn't become truly illuminated until being reborn from the tomb.
In both The Hermetica and the Bible man and woman are described as being images of God. Man and woman are reflections of each other, as in a mirror that inverts the reality of a body, but both are in the image of the one in the middle. From The Hermetica, "Mind, the father of all, who is life and light, gave birth to a man like himself whom he loved as his own child. The man was most fair: he had the father's image; and god, who was really in love with his own form, bestowed on him all his craftworks." From the Book of Genesis, "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
There's an interesting part in George Adamski's book, Inside the Space Ships, where he sees what appears to be a deity on the wall of the flying saucer he is in, "On the wall exactly opposite the door through which we had entered hung a portrait which I was certain must represent Deity. The emotion which the beauty of the two young women had aroused in me was momentarily forgotten as the wonderful radiance emanating from the portrait enveloped me. It showed the head and shoulders of a Being who could have been eighteen to twenty-five years of age, in whose face was embodied the perfect blended balance of male and female, and whose eyes held a wisdom and compassion beyond description. I do not know how long I was enrapt by this beauty. There was no interruption until I myself returned to an awareness of my surroundings. I did not need to ask who this Being was. Kalna broke the silence by saying, “That is our symbol of Ageless Life."
The end result of unifying the polar opposites to create the Rebis is described quite well by David Goddard in The Tower of Alchemy, "Union with these inner partners-the other halves of our true creative selves-produces blissful experience (Sahaja) far more intense than any possible physical delight. Very few practitioners indeed are able to gain this region, or succeed in realizing and absorbing its stupendous energies. If they do, they may go on to reach a realm of the ultimate Reality, towering over the summit of the subtle body-the habitation of the Supreme Principle-totally and blissfully united with the supreme Wisdom, Chokmah. The vision attributed to the second Sephira is "The vision of God, face to face." Those who succeed enter the Void, the thrice-radiant darkness of Ain. For such an advanced Practitioner (an "apprentice Sage" in fact) the visualizations become redundant as the direct union of Bliss and Wisdom occurs. As the relative and the absolute are superconsciously united, Ain, the No-thing, is experienced as the indescribable, ineffable and supreme Bliss."
The book called the Rosarium Philosophorum has three images in it on one of the main methods of Alchemy which is combining the two into one and then the one become none. In the first image the king, represented as the Sun, copulates with the Queen as the Moon. The Alchemical mixing of substances were usually represented in Alchemical imagary as copulation.
This images shows the man and woman, Sun and Moon, as being merged together as a hermaphrodite. This is the two becoming one in the union of the Sun and Moon as archtypes for all polar opposites of the Universe. This figure is the same as the Rebis mentioned before.
This is the one becoming none. The little figure rising from the merged King and Queen is the child or the soul and it is what rises up to the higher reality of the world above. Ascension, or salvation, is what is being shown here and One must become None in order for this to happen.
The Androgynous ones as the perfect beings.
