The Fullness of God--Consciousness Flows Outward

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. This week we’re going to review one of the basic original teachings here at Gnostic Insights, and that is how what we call the Fullness or the Pleroma of God—how it came to be, what it is, what does it mean when the New Testament, for example, says the phrase the Fullness of God.

For Christians this generally just is an idea that God is big and great and huge and it’s full, it’s full of everything, the fullness. Yes, but it’s actually more than that in Gnosticism. In Gnosticism, the Fullness or the Pleroma of God is a step in the way that consciousness rolled out from the Father through the Son and then differentiated into the Fullness of God. And each part of that differentiation is part of the Son of God. And the Son wears the ALL like a garment, it says, and the ALL wears the Son like a garment, meaning they’re co-existent.

So we’re going to review one of the very first episodes of Gnostic Insights. It’s been quite a blessing to discover that over the last four years very little of what was originally taught here at Gnostic Insights has modified or changed, and it’s just the ever so slightest thing here and there, like relabeling one item on a diagram. That’s been about it.

Hey, if you live in Southern Oregon or Northern California, I’d like to invite you to come to Southern Oregon University if you’re close enough to commute once a week, because I will be teaching a class at what is called the OLLI, O-L-L-I, which is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Southern Oregon University. I’ll be teaching a 10-week course called A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, and people will be using A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel book as the textbook, so this is a very exciting opportunity for me. And to have 10 weeks with the same group of people who sign up to sit and learn, or remember as it were, it should be an interesting process. Here is the OLLI link if you would like to register for the class. This course is for the Fall semester, beginning September 15th of 2025.

Also, another piece of news is that the children’s book is all but finished. Everything was completely done, and I uploaded it, and now I’m waiting for the proof copy to come so I can verify that everything falls within the margins. The illustrator’s having to go back on two of the pages out of the children’s book to move Logos, of all things—to move him into the page, because when you account for the trim size, Logos got cropped off of two of the pages, and we can’t have that!

By the way, I’ve noticed that everybody around here who uses the word Logos, even a school by that name and all the students that go to the school, pronounces it Lo-gahs, and I’ve also heard some radio preachers say Lo-gahs. It’s not Lo-gahs, it’s Low-gohs. That’s how I learned it in graduate school, because we study what Logos means, not from a Gnostic point of view, but from Greek philosophy. Logos was often discussed in the major that I majored in when I was working on my PhD, which was Classical Rhetoric. So I thought, well, how come we called it Logos and everybody around here calls it Lo-gahs?

But I looked it up in the pronunciation guides on the internet, and they all say Logos, or Logoze, never Lo-gahs. So I think we’re in good shape to be referring to our Aeon from whom we are descended as Logos.

Okay, enjoy this replay of an old episode. I’ll pop in now and then if I need to. Onward and upward!

In 2019, I wrote a book called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, and what I am attempting to do in this podcast is talk you through the book so that you will have your own personal and very full understanding of what gnosis is, and hopefully be able to actually realize gnosis while you’re hearing these podcasts.

By the way, what is gnosis? We keep talking about gnosis and the word Gnostic. Gnosis means knowing, and in the Gnostic frame of reference, gnosis refers to remembering the truth of our existence and our creation, and the creation of the entire cosmos. It is thought that we hold all of this knowledge within ourselves, and we have complete access to the Creator of the universe at any time that we turn our focus on the Creator, and it is this direct conduit to the Creator that gives us what is called gnosis.

G-N-O-S-I-S, that’s a Greek word. Another related word to gnosis is, and this is a big word, called anamnesis. You know the word amnesia means forgetting? Anamnesis means not forgetting. So, the process of coming to gnosis is a process called anamnesis. Just to let you know if you want to throw around any big words.

Today we’re going to talk about the qualities of the ALL, and how the ALL became what is called the Pleroma, and the Aeons of the Pleroma.

Many peop