Finding Spirit Within

"knowledge of the pneuma (spirit) to the soul and mind"

I've been looking for alignment, and I just found it. The Mother once again helped me! Thank
you! This is what I was working at and this is what I discovered. Just recently I was studying
the body, the soul and the spirit, looking to see which is which as it proceeds from out of me.
I was paying attention very closely, and I had much complications in understanding just what
I was perceiving, as, one part of my essence shone through and I listened to it, and it led me
to a place where old greivances were healed up. But upon being in company with that person,
they said something to me, in a negative, so that I thought they were talking about that
essence. So there was confusion there. I think they were talking about the soul, not the spirit,
and that is why it was a negative connotation. Because the spirit is pure, and all good,
whereas the soul is animal based.

So today I was very determined to find where the center of peace of mind, peace of heart,
peace of whole being is. I had noticed all kinds of different things happening within me, and a
certain type of sorrow which I kept equating with wanting to be with Father Creator, the
Original. And nothing of this earth or anything could make me to feel like wanting to be here. I
was so determined then, to find out just where exactly IS my spirit.

That's when I heard the Mother speaking, way deep from within me, and She reminded me of
the third aspect of myself (not that she said anything about that, but that I remembered the
experience when I first heard her coming to me through that avenue) that I had found when I
was 17 years old, while searching out who I am. I found the left side which was a great big
large black sphere and feminine, and I found the right side which was a tiny dot of golden
light, compared to the left side. The right side was the masculine side. And one day they were
fighting because she was taking up all the decisions, she was being way too dominant, and I
saw that it was getting out of hand, so my right side started to object and began to find
ground of their own. That is when she appeared, the third one. It is like she came from above
my head, swooped down on the left and right me's, and began talking of really highly
knowledgeable things, and she was light-like with a joy that isn't about emotions but is an
energy of motion. She immediately told them (us) to stop fighting and to work together. We
both stood there staring at her, surprised, fascinated and listening to her speak, because she
had such intricate knowledge that we hadn't a clue of. After she finished speaking she left the
same way as she came, apparently back to work in the higher knowledge ways.

So we stopped fighting and eventually we became one person, the left and the right side, with
hardly a distinction between them. That was the one and only time I had experienced her, the
third part of myself. And now today, Mother came from a deep part of me, way back there in
the middle, and she has a sweet and lovely voice, and is very gentle. As soon as I heard her I
focused my entire energy on her so I could grow from what she had to teach. She said that
the words I'm reading on these pages, all these books, are not where knowledge is found. She
said it's inside of me. And I wondered about that. She said the books are the second source.
But the first source is inside of me. And so I asked her, but from where inside of me, and
how will I know when I've found it? So I started looking inside of me all over, and I didn't
find anything at first. Then came to my attention that other being who has been
communicating with me ever since 1984, and I looked at him internally. I don't see him as a
picture, I just listen to his sound and the feeling that his presence gives off and that's how I
see a 'picture' of him. And I began wondering about how to bring peace within me between
him and I, because if I hear him inside of me, and I argue with him inside of me, then there is
no peace. But I want peace all through me. So I began to look at him. And that's when
Mother brought to my view his essence. She showed me how he too was like me, and that
there was love in our beings. So I looked at him a lot closer and noticed a really shiny light
pouring from his golden-mean center, at the heart area. And I felt a strong energy which
frightens my soul or my physical, and I've always wondered about that. It's like an animal
overpowered by the higher energy, and so it fears. Well this time I forced through moving
past those initial impulses so I could see what the Mother was teaching me.

The next thing you know, I began looking for that spirit, that light, inside of myself. That is
when the Mother said that this is where your strength is, where your power is. She showed
me that it is in the center of your heart area, that light. And then I started picking up clues
from parts of my life that I had read or heard or learned about, like astronomy, and I saw that
that light is like a Sun which your mind, Mercury, travels around in its appropriate manner.

When the mind, Mercury, travels all around the body, or in the head part, then it is out of
alignment. It is alone, without the warmth of the sunshine. It is like dark reality, or ignorance
or ugly ego in all its utter distortions. Only when the Mind revolves around the center, the
Light of the body, the spirit, then is it aligned properly. So I began focusing my attention in
that area, and I found that is where perfection is. That is the essence I had seen yesterday,
working through my soul-self getting me out of the house and on to a mission that I had no
idea I was fulfiling until it was completed. Then I looked back and saw how that essence,
what you call my spirit, had been working through all the other parts of my being for fulfilling
tasks that I had no idea I was fulfilling.

So the spirit inside of you is like the Sun in the center of the solar system. The mind is like
Mercury when it properly keeps its attention and focus on the Sun at all times, to
communicate and listen to what the Sun is relaying over to the Mind, Mercury. And once you
find your alignment, you pay attenion to it often so you set the alignment in the correct place
and work from there. And that's what I'll be focusing my attention on from now. Oh and, I
also noticed that the spirit, the center at heart area, doesn't think like the mind, it doesn't talk.
Instead, it emanates. It's very difficult to comprehend how to put it into words. It is animated
from a point and emanates knowledge, beauty, excellence, strength, sobriety, love of a very
strong order without being romantic in style, and essence of all this, in not word form but of a
compact way that suits the entire structure of the person living in the body in which all this
dwells. So now I've found the peace I was looking for. And this is what I mean to develop.

Here's the work I was reading while the Mother was teaching me all this.

============

VALENTINUS
A Gnostic for All Seasons
by Stephan A. Hoeller

When questioned regarding the personal elements in his lifelong interest in matters Gnostic,
Professor Gilles Quispel, the noted Gnostic expert and associate of C.G. Jung, tells a
remarkable story. During the dark and hopeless years of World War II, when life and the
world seemed lacking in hope and joy, Quispel turned to the study of the message of the great
Gnostic teacher and poet, Valentinus. The inspiration, comfort, and faith derived from the
writings of Valentinus were instrumental in turning Quispel into a devoted and thoroughly
sympathetic scholar of Gnosticism. It would not be a gross exaggeration to state that the
experience of the Dutch scholar is far from unique and that numerous persons in our
contemporary world are finding the message of this greatest of all Gnostic teachers of
eminent and helpful relevance in their lives.

The Almost Pope
G.R.S. Mead, the great early translator and theosophical interpreter of Gnostic documents,
called Valentinus "the great unknown" of Gnosticism, and indeed it is true that we do not
possess much information regarding his life and personality. He was born in Africa, probably
within the territory of the ancient city of Carthage, around or before 100 A.D. He was
educated in Alexandria and in the prime of his years transferred his residence to Rome, where
he achieved a high degree of prominence in the Christian community between 135 and 160
A.D. Tertullian wrote that Valentinus was a candidate for the office of bishop of Rome and
that he lost the election by a rather narrow margin. This same failed orthodox church father
(Tertullian himself joined the heresy of Montanism) alleges that Valentinus fell into apostasy
around 175 A.D. There is much evidence indicating, however, that he was never universally
condemned as a heretic in his lifetime and that he was a respected member of the Christian
community until his death. He was almost certainly a priest in the mainstream church and may
even have been a bishop.

It is certainly a question of some interest what the course of Christian theology might have
been had Valentinus been elected to the office of bishop of Rome. His hermeneutic vision
combined with his superb sense of the mythical would have probably resulted in a general
flowering of the Gnosis within the very fabric of the Church of Rome, and might have created
an authoritative paradigm of Gnostic Christianity that could not have been easily exorcised for
centuries, if at all.

Like many of the greatest Gnostic teachers, Valentinus claimed to have been instructed by a
direct disciple of one of Jesus' apostles, an "apostolic man" by the name of Theodas.
Tertullian also stated that Valentinus was personally acquainted with Origen, and one may
speculate with some justification that his influence on this orthodox church father was
considerable. The overall character of his contribution has been accurately summarized by
Mead in the following manner:

The Gnosis in his hands is trying to . . . embrace everything, even the most dogmatic
formulation of the traditions of the Master. The great popular movement and its
incomprehensibilities were recognized by Valentinus as an integral part of the mighty
outpouring; he laboured to weave all together, external and internal, into one piece, devoted
his life to the task, and doubtless only at his death perceived that for that age he was
attempting the impossible. None but the very few could ever appreciate the ideal of the man,
much less understand it. (Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, p. 297)

Valentinus, the Gnostic who almost became pope, was thus the only man who could have
succeeded in gaining a form of permanent positive recognition for the Gnostic approach to
the message of Christ. The fact that circumstances and the increasing floodtide of a
regressive pseudo-orthodoxy caused his efforts to fail must be reckoned among the greatest
tragedies of the history of Christianity. Still, many essential features of his unique contribution
have survived and more have recently surfaced from the sands of the desert of Egypt. We
shall address ourselves to the most important of these in the following pages.


Psycho-Cosmogony and the Pneumatic Equation
The often-debated cosmogony of Valentinus might be most profitably understood as being
based on a single existential recognition, which might be summarized thus: Something is
wrong. Somewhere, somehow, the fabric of being at the existential level of human functioning
has lost its integrity. We live in a system which is lacking in essential integrity, and thus is
defective. So-called orthodox Christians as well as Jews recognize that there is a certain
"wrongness" in human existence, but they account for it chiefly in terms of the effects of
human sin, original or other. Jews and Christians hold that whatever is wrong with the world
and human existence is the result of human disobedience to the creator. This means, that all
evil, discomfort, and terror in our lives and in history are somehow our fault. A great cosmic
statement of "Mea Culpa" runs through this world view, which permanently affixes to the
human psyche an element of titanic guilt. Valentinus, in opposition to this guilt-ridden view of
life, held that the above-noted defect is not the result of our wrongdoing, but is inherent in the
system of existence wherein we live and move and have our being. Moreover, by postulating
that creation itself is lacking in integrity, Valentinus not only removes the weight of personal
and collective guilt from our shoulders but also points to the redemptive potential resident in
the soul of every human being.

Humans live in an absurd world that can be rendered meaningful only by Gnosis, or self-
knowledge. When referring to the myth of the creation of the world by a god, Valentinus
shifts the blame for the condition of cosmic defect from humanity to creative divinity. That
God the creator could be at fault in anything is of course tantamount to blasphemy in the eyes
of the orthodox. What we need to recognize, however, is that Valentinus does not view the
creator with the worshipful eyes of the Judeo-Christian believer, but rather sees the creator -
along with other divinities - as a mythologem. Much evidence could be adduced to
demonstrate this, but one must suffice here, taken from the Gospel of Philip:

God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they
worship their creations. If would be fitting for the gods to worship men. (Logion 85: 1-4)

The present writer holds that Valentinian (as well as all other) Gnosticism can be understood
in psychological terms, so that the religious mythologems treated by the Gnostics are taken to
symbolize psychological conditions and intra-psychic powers of the mind. Taking this
approach we might conclude that what Valentinus tells us is that because our minds have lost
their self-knowledge, we live in a self-created world that is lacking in integrity. The word
kosmos used by Gnostics does not mean "world," but rather "system," and thus can be
perfectly well applied to the systematization of reality created by the human ego. We need not
worry overmuch about whether Valentinus insults Jehovah by calling him a demiurge. What
matters is that we act as our own psychic demiurges by first creating and the inhabiting a
flawed kosmos created in the image and likeness of our own flaws.

The proposition that the human mind lives in a largely self-created world of illusion from
whence only the enlightenment of a kind of Gnosis can rescue it finds powerful analogues in
the two great religions of the East, i.e., Hinduism and Buddhism. The following statement
from the Upanishads could easily have been written by Valentinus or another Gnostic: "This
(world) is God's Maya, through which he deceives himself." According to the teachings of
Buddha, the world of apparent reality consists of ignorance, impermanence, and the lack of
authentic selfhood. Valentinus is in very good company indeed when he establishes the
proposition of the wrong system of false reality that can be set aright by the human spirit.

This brings us to the second part of what some scholars have called the "pneumatic equation"
of Valentinus. After accepting the proposition of the flawed system, the mind needs to
recognize a second and complementary truth. Irenaeus in his work against heresies quotes
Valentinus concerning this:

Perfect redemption is the cognition itself of the ineffable greatness: for since through
ignorance came about the defect . . . the whole system springing from ignorance is dissolved
in Gnosis. Therefore Gnosis is the redemption of the inner man; and it is not of the body, for
the body is corruptible; nor is it psychical, for even the soul is a product of the defect and it
is a lodging to the spirit: pneumatic (spiritual) therefore also must be redemption itself.
Through Gnosis, then, is redeemed the inner, spiritual man: so that to us suffices the Gnosis
of universal being: and this is the true redemption. (Adv. Haer. I. 21,4)

The ignorance of the agencies that create the false system is thus undone and rectified by the
spiritual Gnosis of the human being. The defect can be removed from being by Gnosis. There
is no need whatsoever for guilt, for repentance from so-called sin, neither is there a need for a
blind belief in a vicarious salvation by way of the death of Jesus. We don't need to be saved;
we need to be transformed by Gnosis. The wrong-headedness, perversity, obtuseness, and
malignancy of the existential condition of humanity can be changed into a glorious image of
the fullness of being. This is done not by guilt, shame, and an eternal saviour but by the
activation of the redemptive potential of self-knowledge. Spiritual self-knowledge thus
becomes the inverse equivalent of the ignorance of the unredeemed ego. The elaborate mythic
structures of cosmogonic and redemptive content bequeathed to us by Valentinus are but the
poetic-scriptural expressions of this grand proposition, which has a direct relevance to the
existential condition of the human psyche in all ages and in all cultures.

The Gnostic Saviour: a Maker of Wholeness
It would be erroneous to deduce from the foregoing that Valentinus negated or even
diminished the importance of Jesus in his teachings. The great devotion and reverence shown
for Jesus by Valentinus is amply manifest with sublime poetic beauty in the Gospel of Truth,
which in its original form was in fact authored by Valentinus himself. According to Valentinus,
Jesus is indeed Saviour, but the term needs to be understood in the meaning of the original
Greek word, used by orthodox and Gnostic Christian alike. This word is soter, meaning
healer, or bestower of health. From this is derived the word today translated as salvation, i.e.,
soteria, which originally meant healthiness, deliverance from imperfection, becoming whole,
and preserving one's wholeness. What then is the role of the soter of spiritual maker of
wholeness, if he clearly has no need to save humankind from either original or personal sin?
What is the state or condition of newly found spiritual health bestowed or facilitated by such
a healer-saviour?

The Gnostic contention is that both the world and humanity are sick. The sickness of the
world and its equivalent human illness both have one common root: ignorance. We ignore the
authentic values of life and substitute unauthentic ones for them. The unauthentic values are
for the most part either physical or of the mind. We believe that we need things (such as
money, symbols of power and prestige, physical pleasures) in order to be happy or whole.
Similarly we fall in love with the ideas and abstractions of our minds. (The rigidities and the
hardness of our lives are always due to our excessive attachment to abstract concepts and
precepts.) The sickness of materialism was called hyleticism (worship of matter) by the
Gnostics, while the sickness of abstract intellectualism and moralizing was known as
psychism (worship of the mind-emotional soul). The true role of the facilitators of wholeness
in this world, among whom Jesus occupied the place of honor, is that they can exorcise these
sicknesses by bringing knowledge of the pneuma (spirit) to the soul and mind.

What is this pneuma, this spirit, which alone brings Gnosis and healing to the sickness of
human nature? We cannot truly say what it is, but we can indicate what it does. It has been
said that the spirit bloweth where it listeth. It brings flexibility, existential courage of life. By
way of the healing agency of pneuma, the soul ceases to be fascinated and confined by things
and ideas and thus it can address itself to life. The obsession of the human psyche with the
importance of the material world and/or of the abstract intellectual and moral world is the
sickness from which the great saviours of humanity redeem us. The obsessive state of
material and mental attachments is thus replaced by spiritual freedom; the unauthentic values
of the former are made to give way to the authentic ones brought by the spirit.

Union and Redemption as Sacraments
The methods advocated by Valentinus for the facilitating of a true spiritual Gnosis are not
confined to philosophical doctrines and poetic mythologems. The Valentinian system was
above all a system of sacrament. The Gospel of Philip mentions five of the seven historical
sacraments (or rather their original Gnostic forms) explicitly and mentions the two remaining
ones by implication.

In addition to baptism, anointing, eucharist, the initiation of priests and the rites of the dying,
the Valentinian Gnosis mentions prominently two great and mysterious sacraments called
"redemption" (apolytrosis) and "bridal chamber" respectively. While many of the formulae for
these rites have been lost, their essential meanings can still be discovered by perusing the
various accounts given by the church fathers and the references contained in the Gnostic
scriptures.

The bridal chamber, or pneumatic union, is by far the most frequently alluded to of the greater
sacraments. The Gospel of Philip makes constant references to it and statements concerning
it are scattered in a large number of the Gnostic scriptures. Irenaeus associates this sacrament
primarily with the followers of Valentinus, but the theoretical foundations serving as its
psychological rationale are present in the corpus of Gnostic writings generally. Thus the
Gospel According to Thomas, which is generally considered to be relatively free of
Valentinian influences, presents us with what might be considered the clearest formulation of
the theoretical foundation of the bridal chamber in its 22nd Logion:

When you make the two one, and when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the
inner and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female into a single
one, so that the male will not be male and the female not be female . . . then shall you enter the
kingdom.

The psychological basis upon which the bridal chamber ritual is founded is fairly easily
understood. The Gnosis considers the human being as divided and fragmented within itself.
The divisions have numerous aspects: We are involved in what modern psychology would
call an Ego-Self dichotomy, in an Anima-Animus dichotomy, in a body-mind dichotomy, in a
subjective-objective dichotomy, and many others. All of these divisions require mending, or
healing. Even as the Pleroma, or divine plenum, is characterized by wholeness, so the human
being must once again become whole and thereby acquire the qualifications to reenter the
Pleroma. Contemporary, especially Jungian depth psychology envisions such a pneumatic
union as the ultimate objective of what it calls the individuation process. Unlike Jungian
psychologists who can offer only the practice of analysis as an instrumentality of the process
of reunification, Valentinus was apparently inspired to document and ritually dramatize this
union in the great sacrament of the bridal chamber. The Sophia myth serves in many ways as
the mythological support of this sacrament. The myth implies that the creation of the
imperfect world and the confinement of the soul within it originated through the disruption of
the original spiritual unity of the Pleroma, so that the return of the soul into the loving embrace
of her bridegroom, as indicated by the return of Sophia into the arms of Jesus, then
represents the healing of this disruption and restoration of wholeness.

The sacrament of the bridal chamber more than any other feature of the Valentinian Gnosis
gives us a clear indication of the psychological versus the theological character of Gnostic
teaching and practice. The professed purpose of this rite is the individual and personal
'becoming one' of the soul of the initiate, and cosmic and eschatological considerations play
no role in this. It is not abstract being or creation that is healed and unified in this sacrament
but the interior being of a human individual. It might be fair to say that Valentinus practiced an
individuation rite, the need for which in today's world is evidenced by the highest and best of
psychological research. It is perhaps characteristic of the sad deterioration of the sacramental
system in historic Christianity that this intrapsychic union has been allowed to devolve into the
sacrament of matrimony, signifying a contractual relationship of two terrestrial personalities
within the context of the flawed order of societal mores.

However, it is not sufficient to be unified in one's nature - so Valentinus implied - one must
also be redeemed from the corrupting and confusing thralldom of the false existential world
wherein one lives. This liberation from the clutches of the world of defect was accomplished
by the sacrament of redemption (apolytrosis) sometimes also called restoration
(apokatastasis). This might be called the final act of separation from the rule of illusory and
deceptive states of mind. While it is by no means established whether the sacrament of the
bridal chamber was administered first and the redemption later, it is the conviction of the
present writer that this indeed was the case. The individual in whom the dualities have been
united and the splits healed (the individuated person, as Jung might have called him or her) is
now empowered to repudiate the forces bereft of illuminating meaning. This is well-expressed
in one of the formulae of restoration preserved from Valentinian source:

I am established, I am redeemed and I redeem my soul from this aeon and from all that comes
from it, in the name of IAO, who redeemed his soul unto the redemption in Christ, the living
one. (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I. 21,5)

Even as Buddha is said to have triumphantly repudiated the works of Mara the deceiver
subsequent to his enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, so the Gnostic severs every
connection with the unconsciousness and compulsion and lives and dies as a sovereign being
of light and power henceforth. There is every indication that the double sacraments of the
bridal chamber and redemption caused enormous transformations and brought a great
empowerment to the lives of their recipients. (These rites survived in modified form among
the followers of the prophet Mani and the Cathars of the Languedoc. The latter had a great
sacrament resembling the apolytrosis, called the consolamentum, which gave its recipients not
only a great serenity of live but a virtually unequaled courage to face death.)

The foregoing - and much other material relating to the Valentinian Gnosis that had to remain
unexplored in this brief exposition - serve to illustrate the great and undeniable virtues of this
heritage of wisdom. Philosophic integrity, psychological insight, poetic and artistic exaltation
and beauty, mingled with true religious devotion and emotion characterize the contribution of
Valentinus and elevate it over most Gnostic and semi-Gnostic systems and schools. Were one
to combine the highest and best products of Existentialism, one might only hope to
approximate the sublime message of the great technician of human transformation who
beckons to us from the distance of nearly two millennia. Valentinus indeed lives. He was and
is a knower, a Gnostic for all seasons, a source of inspiration and guidance for persons in
every age and clime: a timeless messenger of the mysteries of the soul. One could not
conclude this brief exposition and tribute with a more appropriate hope than the one
embodied in the following fragment of a Valentinian blessing:

May the Grace beyond time and space that was before the beginnings of the Universe fill our
inner man and increase within us the semblance of itself as the grain of mustard seed.


The spiritual elect have attained to gnosis and believe "because of the Truth itself" (Herakleon Fragment 39). Valentinian teachers frequently caution those with gnosis to "share it without hesitation" (Interpretation of Knowledge15:36). They are not to despise others as inferior or ignorant, for "you are ignorant when you hate them and are jealous of them, since you will not receive the grace that dwells within them, being unwilling to reconcile them to the bounty of the head" (Interpretation of Knowledge17:27-31) Rather, as "illuminators in the midst of mortal men" (Letter of Peter to Philip137:8-9)., they have a duty to aid in the salvation of those who do not yet have gnosis. In the Gospel of Philip it says, "Whoever becomes free through acquaintance (gnosis) is a slave on account of love towards those who have not yet taken up the freedom of aquaintance (gnosis)" (Gospel of Philip 77:26-29). It is the role of the spiritual to "return to the world to announce the good tidings of Christ's coming to the 'called'. For through the Spirit and by the Spirit, the soul is drawn to the Savior" (Herakleon Fragment 27).

From: The Called and the Elect