Ah, you got me then. Unusual to get more attention with the alt and then return under the older account. Touche! Well, we can proceed in any way you like.
Unusual to get more attention with the alt and then return under the older account
I would have continued with the alt, but I couldn't reply any longer. I tried DM, same thing... I couldn't submit any longer. Not surprising, I have been censored, blocked, banned, downvoted on every platform I have been on. And I don't recall once having said anything hateful, to incite violence, or insulting to anyone. It doesn't matter to me, I have already accepted the world I chose to live in. But they have no power over me, I'm sovereign.
we can proceed in any way you like
I think there is something we both are interested in. If the afterlife is a trap, then what happens to you when you die? And more importantly, how do you escape it?
I think if we can answer this, we would also know why we choose to be were born in the first place. I say choose, because I believe there is freedom of choice here. Last time I said it's complex, and it is. It has to be complex, because if too many souls remembered it, the prison itself would begin to crumble. By reading some of the manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi I found interesting how the Gnostics understood death, not as a doorway to freedom, but as the moment when the soul could be captured and recycled. This is the very mechanism of the trap and the hidden signs that reveal when you're being lured back into it. I'm reading testimonies of people who had near death experiences, similar to the ones who took psychedelics. They all talk about a bright light they see. Most will keep walking toward the light, unaware of who built it or why. But I question everything, in this life and I believe when I die. Perhaps the prison of the Demiurge is not confined to this world at all, but stretches even beyond death itself. A hall of mirrors tricking your soul into returning again and again, replaying life after life. What if death is not the end, not the beginning, but the greatest illusion of all? maybe these are the keys to escape the prison that has bound humanity since the very beginning. Long before our modern religions took shape, the ancient world was alive with whispers of hidden realms, rival gods, and secret knowledge, and among them, perhaps the Gnostics provided a warning unlike any other. Jesus said "The pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to.". I often thought about the meaning of this teaching. Now, I think I finally understood. A hall of mirrors tricking our soul into returning again and again, replaying life after life. What if death is not the end, not the beginning, but the greatest illusion of all?
In nearly every religion of the ancient world, whether the pagan cults of Rome or the rising Christian Church, death was portrayed as a passage into divine reward or punishment. But the Gnostics dared to say something far more unsettling, that death itself could be the snare. Other traditions carried echoes of this. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, known as the Bardo Thodol and also known as the Chai Bardo, the soul is warned of dazzling lights and illusions that appear after death, designed to lure it back into rebirth Even the early Christian thinker, Origen, also known as Origen Adamantius, entertained the idea of pre-existence and cycles of embodiment, teachings later condemned as heresy. But why such eagerness to erase these teachings? Because fear of death is the strongest chain of all, and once a soul breaks it, it slips beyond control. A soul convinced it must return again and again to learn lessons is a soul unlikely to rebel. But a soul that remembers that it was never meant to be trapped, that it belongs to eternity, becomes dangerous. Dangerous not only to the rulers of this world, but to the Demiurge itself. I think the Gnostics understood this, that's why they saw themselves as exiles.
I have written a lot on this subject and it's getting late. It's a lot more to explore here, including the final test with the Demiurge itself. I'm just curious if you have any questions.
Exactly! I don't see anything wrong with your account so it may just be one of the site oddities. You can go to c/Meta with the alt, and try creating a post with title and text as "Test", and if that works you can change the text to whatever question you have of admin; and if it doesn't you can message the mods of Meta, which include a copy to admin, though they've been a bit slow lately. Sometimes, not always, I can find someone who can help a technically stranded user if you want me to intervene.
I'm reading testimonies of people who had near death experiences, similar to the ones who took psychedelics. They all talk about a bright light they see. Most will keep walking toward the light, unaware of who built it or why.
Funny thing, all NDEs by definition involve people choosing not to continue with the light, because if they did we wouldn't hear back from them. This logically indicates that we can't judge the light as a trap (a negative), only as an experience that most people don't leave for whatever reason. The other primary aspect of NDEs, when it's not the light, is the pain, and those who have experienced that and succeeded in not continuing with it speak of it as to be avoided, whether or not they change their lives to avoid it in the future. While we can't judge that either, the testimony of the light as "good" and the pain as "evil" is exceptionally strong, myriads of reported cases that almost always fall in one of those two categories.
Skeptically, if NDEs don't reflect ultimate truth any more than our daily experience (technically they don't), that isn't overwhelming evidence for or against a particular conclusion about them. The line of evidence I go with is that logic dictates either there is a Greatest Thing (Monad) or nothing can be said to exist (nihilism), and that perfectly aligns with the NDE evidence. If we decided to be skeptical of the NDE light, we would still have the duty to rightly reflect the Monad in us regardless, and I think that practice in life will guide us aright when the trial of death comes. So it's fine to use skepticism to pare alternatives down, but if you pare everything then Nihilism is left, and if you uphold the Monad then attributes keep emanating from it that cannot be pared away and prove it as the source of all diversity. So if reincarnation was a trap, the best remedy would be right living today, and that's pretty much of what the Hindus say and they're the deepest thinkers on reincarnation.
If the Pharisees had the (knowledge) key to escape and hid it, its evidence would still be present in their system somewhere, wouldn't it? If we take Jesus's reported teaching in gospels and apocrypha at face value, he is pretty straightforward about epignosis (and the OT has many cognate teachings, starting with binah, da'ath, mada', sekhel), that he gives it freely by revelation (Matt. 11:27, Luke 24:31). What he tells us quietly we are free to proclaim loudly. So I think that knowing the Son, emulating the Christ, is that key to knowledge, and those Pharisees (not all) who rejected their traditions about Christ were the ones who hid it.
Origen syncretized the reward/punishment afterlife with the cyclical by theorizing (though not totally committing) that the righteous soul after a period of reward might lapse back and then would enter another cycle, which might also reincarnate. What happened afterward was that his corpus was widely respected but some took the cyclic teaching heavily and the church chose to issue a condemnation that moderated two extremes: they did not condemn Origen or his teaching in particular, but they did condemn an unspecified "corrupt apokatastasis" while holding that there was a valid and incorrupt apokatastasis. So it is left ambiguous what exactly they condemned. Personally I think it was the form of the teaching where individuation is erased as a phenomenon, because they were still holding onto echoes of gilgul where individuation is respected but the oversoul is still learning collectively. The immediate reason was that removal of individual responsibility was observed to encourage licentious living and so it was very practical, not theoretical. That again goes back to the best preparation being righteous living (pursuit of truth at all costs), and then whatever awaits one is as strong as possible in the grace God gives. Particularly, the early church was, I think, unanimous that martyrs had zero fear of death, that they were sustained by visions of Christ to endure great torments and that union with Christ is a form of remembering the preexistence as a concept in the Monadic consciousness.
Now, you're proposing a narrative where a later legalist church has learned tools of control from the Roman empire, and where they play up the fear of death for this purpose, which shifts the focus of righteous living toward legalism (human-verified righteousness) rather than Christian liberty (divine-verified righteousness). That phenomenon is present but I don't see it in the Origen story. The story of all the gnostics who did teach a trap in the afterlife is, I think, separate because it was almost complete by the 3rd century and the Origen kerfuffle was quite later (you might argue that Clement of Alexandria first syncretized gnosticism into a system that later became Origenism, but it had lost all of the character you're seeing in it and only retained echoes in their sophisticated collations).
But that still leaves the core unsettled. If one doesn't know a goal, one's category would be "seeker", one who hasn't found. If one thinks advancing toward the light is a trap, and one can be confident advancing toward the pain is certainly a trap, one is seeking what other alternative there is on either NDE or Scripture or Apocrypha evidence. This leads to ternary systems but they seem to come much later and I'm not sure what analogues they have in the gnostic and proto-Christian period.
Now something fresh comes to mind, and since I'm already typing at length I'll include it. It might be possible that the "good ending" includes the choice of the best eternal existences, which would be the Pauline category "whether in the body or out of the body I can't tell". Perhaps the individual can choose to restore the matrix, in its perfected form, building from the DNA stored by the earth, or can choose the opposite, to release the DNA and to retain a pure spiritual form. That would certainly remove the chief scandal between the gnostics and the traditionals! I'd want to run that idea through a few filters, but that might be the character of what you appear to want to describe. It's not literal anywhere that "approaching light" automatically equals "flesh trap"; I've generally presumed that flesh as we know it isn't flesh as it will be revealed (here another Pauline concept intervenes, the "spiritual body"; but let's take it from Peter instead, who prophesied that even pigs can have pure, kosher bodies, Acts 10). So while the gnostics and the trads agree that the present flesh is to be deprecated, the resolution might be that we need not argue over the question of whether anyone is or isn't forced to take flesh up again (even if it's transfigured). Perhaps it's a liberty issue.
So I probably have several questions, so I'll try to focus them. So far you're narrating and really so am I. What's most unanswered to me is where the core teaching is to be found. What is the path to be taken to achieve one's heart's desire? And what is the nature of that desire? I haven't gleaned those, and at risk of being wrong I'll say it appears the path you recommend is to Know certain rules in the hope of remembering them in a postdeath confrontation, which would imply that one's duty in this life is to constantly study postdeath rules and would make it hard to live in the present. I've proposed instead that the entire life is about learning right living now and that all postdeath issues will be addressed by the preparations we make now and the patterns and disciplines that lead to the postdeath decisions. (In the same way, what I practice causes what I perceive myself doing in dreams: I have better dreams when I am practicing right living, because in the dream my unconscious habitually selects the right option without conscious will.) As to the second question, perhaps my untested suggestion that the best state is where the soul can choose its physical form or lack thereof might appeal to you. I don't know if I'd formally accept the suggestion myself, but since it has come to mind it can be tested like everything.
Last side point, just as a matter of politely requesting that you could do me a favor for my own sensibilities' sake. When you're speaking of the character you call demiurge, could you please stick to names I agree apply to that character (such as Samael or satan or Saklas), since it doesn't matter to you what you call him but it does matter to me? I only ask as an unimportant but helpful conversational bridge; if not I can accommodate but it might go slower.
I don't think it's the platform. I believe the issue is at my end. Anyway not much I can do about this for now, so I just have to live with it.
So if reincarnation was a trap, the best remedy would be right living today
I agree "right living" is absolutely the way to go. I don't find that to be much of a challenge for me... not any longer. The first advice I would give anyone is stop lying. Don’t even tell white lies.
If the Pharisees had the (knowledge) key to escape and hid it, its evidence would still be present in their system somewhere, wouldn't it?
Possibly, but not in plain sight. And access to the Vatican Library is limited to accredited researchers. And US has something called Sensitive compartmented information (SCI). SCI is not a classification, it is high-level clearance.
Now, you're proposing a narrative where a later legalist church has learned tools of control from the Roman empire
IMO, the church didn't learn from the Roman empire, the church was built as an institution to serve the empire. This was one of Paul's "innovations". Paul was focused on organization and structure. Jesus and his followers were very egalitarian. They didn't believe in hierarchy and shared everything in common. They lived simply. They didn't build institutions. But Paul insists that you need hierarchy and organization and structure to spread the message effectively. You need bishops and deacons and churches and formal procedures. So he's building churches all around the Roman Empire. He's creating an organizational structure. He's establishing protocols. This is not spiritual teaching. This is institution building.
It's not literal anywhere that "approaching light" automatically equals "flesh trap"
Going back to NDEs and if you read carefully their stories, the first thing you see is a light, radiant, irresistible. It draws you closer. Loved ones appear smiling, calling your name. A warmth fills you, and for a moment, you are certain this is heaven, this is home. But this may not be a light, for not all that shines is light. IMO, it is very possible this tunnel of light is a structure, a construction, a luminous snare woven by the archons to recycle you back into the cycle of death and rebirth. The comforting voices may not be your ancestors at all, but projections, illusions crafted to keep you from questioning where you truly are. The Hypostasis of the Archons talks of rulers who bind humanity in forgetfulness. The Apocryphon of John describes how the Demiurge fashioned the soul's prison, surrounding it with layers of deception. The Pistis Sophia, hints at the perilous journey of the soul through realms of judgement and false lights. So, yeah I think it's literal.
So, why does the light appear so irresistible? Why do souls return so willingly? perhaps it's the genius of the illusion. It appeals to your deepest longing, the longing to be safe, to be loved, to belong and be reunited with source. What better bait than the faces of those you cherished in life? What stronger tether than the promise of reunion? So, maybe the first part of the illusion is seduction, the dazzling light, the false reunion, then the second part is entanglement. There is a parallel with what we can observe the TPTB and their actions in our world today. The archons are forces who question, judge and weigh the soul, not to guide it toward liberation, but to bind it more tightly to the cycle of matter. Have you ever heard the sentence "life review"? NSDs describe being shown their deeds, feeling their emotions replayed, and being told that they must learn more lessons. But who is conducting this review? the archons, who are the judges, which is something that is hidden. The Gnostics would say this judgement does not come from the true source, but from the counterfeit rulers of this world. Judgement, even when it feels like it comes from the soul itself, is still part of the illusion. By convincing the soul that it has failed, that it must return to correct its mistakes, the archons ensure the cycle of reincarnation never ends. This makes sense to me, that's exactly what I would do if I was a parasite, an archon. I would want to make sure the supply of energy never ends. I think in the movie Matrix machines use humans as batteries not because humans make a good power source, but because doing this allows the machines to avoid committing genocide, as would otherwise be required by their laws.
it appears the path you recommend is to Know certain rules in the hope of remembering them in a postdeath confrontation, which would imply that one's duty in this life is to constantly study postdeath rules
This is not exactly correct. But, I will elaborate on this later, in a different message.
When you're speaking of the character you call demiurge, could you please stick to names I agree apply to that character (such as Samael or satan or Saklas), since it doesn't matter to you what you call him but it does matter to me
The demiurge (Greek demiurgos) is the being who created the world in Gnosticism. So, when referring to Gnostics manuscripts & texts it's very hard to replace Demiurge with something else. I'll try using Satan wherever makes sense. Outside of the Gnostics texts I have no issue using a different name. How about Lucifer, the god worshipped by Freemasons? that according to many high level Freemasons themselves. “That which we must say to a crowd is – We worship a God, but it is the God that one adores without superstition. To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th degrees – The Masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian Doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay whose deeds prove his cruelty, perfidy and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion for science, would Adonay and his priests, calumniate him? Yes, Lucifer is God" - Albert Pike 33° Freemason, Morals and Dogma page 321
But Paul insists that you need hierarchy and organization and structure to spread the message effectively. You need bishops and deacons and churches and formal procedures. So he's building churches all around the Roman Empire. He's creating an organizational structure. He's establishing protocols. This is not spiritual teaching. This is institution building.
Institutionalization took 300 years and has many contributors. But primitive Christianity had organic structure. Jesus says have deacons, Matt. 20:26, 23:11; the Twelve appointed servants with this function, Acts 6:1-6 (while Saul was still threatening murderously). The Eleven count themselves bishops and establish the appointment of new ones, Acts 1:20; Peter also affirms Jesus as bishop, 1 Peter 2:25. Jesus built a church, Matt. 16:18, 18:17; the apostles affirmed it, Acts 2:47, etc.; and Luke calls the structure plural churches of the brothers right at the time Saul gets saved, Acts 9:31; and John and Jesus confirm this plural structure repeatedly in Rev. 1-3 and 22. Procedure is fluid but I don't see a special difference between Paul being procedural and any others; the biggest procedure appears to be the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, where Paul and many other church leaders all had equal standing. So I can be anti-institutionalism while still affirming that Jesus wanted a little free organic structure.
The Pistis Sophia, hints at the perilous journey of the soul through realms of judgement and false lights. So, yeah I think it's literal.
Okay, will look into it in time.
By convincing the soul that it has failed, that it must return to correct its mistakes, the archons ensure the cycle of reincarnation never ends.
I can't logically conclude that. 100% of our evidence is from those who didn't stay with the light, so in all those cases the person avoids a cycle of reincarnation. As for the rest we can't use the light evidence to determine their fates because they don't return or provide evidence; we can only use general data about reincarnation. But I don't know that it's that important; verifiable facts are important.
Yes, Lucifer is also a good name. I'm just not buying the evidence that he has any creative power.
Now, I've been exploring my hesitant suggestion yesterday, and it might work, namely that the righteous might get to make a free choice as described in Romans 14. Those whose conscience doesn't want a body of flesh might, in the apokatastasis, get the right not to carry one, while those whose conscience isn't troubled might get the right to carry one, and each is fully convinced in his own conscience and neither deprecates the other. I'm still exploring whether that's a useful theology otherwise, but in this case it really breaks down the wall between traditional and gnostic views of the corruption of the present universe because everyone can get what they want.
Ah, you got me then. Unusual to get more attention with the alt and then return under the older account. Touche! Well, we can proceed in any way you like.
I would have continued with the alt, but I couldn't reply any longer. I tried DM, same thing... I couldn't submit any longer. Not surprising, I have been censored, blocked, banned, downvoted on every platform I have been on. And I don't recall once having said anything hateful, to incite violence, or insulting to anyone. It doesn't matter to me, I have already accepted the world I chose to live in. But they have no power over me, I'm sovereign.
I think there is something we both are interested in. If the afterlife is a trap, then what happens to you when you die? And more importantly, how do you escape it?
I think if we can answer this, we would also know why we choose to be were born in the first place. I say choose, because I believe there is freedom of choice here. Last time I said it's complex, and it is. It has to be complex, because if too many souls remembered it, the prison itself would begin to crumble. By reading some of the manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi I found interesting how the Gnostics understood death, not as a doorway to freedom, but as the moment when the soul could be captured and recycled. This is the very mechanism of the trap and the hidden signs that reveal when you're being lured back into it. I'm reading testimonies of people who had near death experiences, similar to the ones who took psychedelics. They all talk about a bright light they see. Most will keep walking toward the light, unaware of who built it or why. But I question everything, in this life and I believe when I die. Perhaps the prison of the Demiurge is not confined to this world at all, but stretches even beyond death itself. A hall of mirrors tricking your soul into returning again and again, replaying life after life. What if death is not the end, not the beginning, but the greatest illusion of all? maybe these are the keys to escape the prison that has bound humanity since the very beginning. Long before our modern religions took shape, the ancient world was alive with whispers of hidden realms, rival gods, and secret knowledge, and among them, perhaps the Gnostics provided a warning unlike any other. Jesus said "The pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them. They themselves have not entered, nor have they allowed to enter those who wish to.". I often thought about the meaning of this teaching. Now, I think I finally understood. A hall of mirrors tricking our soul into returning again and again, replaying life after life. What if death is not the end, not the beginning, but the greatest illusion of all?
In nearly every religion of the ancient world, whether the pagan cults of Rome or the rising Christian Church, death was portrayed as a passage into divine reward or punishment. But the Gnostics dared to say something far more unsettling, that death itself could be the snare. Other traditions carried echoes of this. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, known as the Bardo Thodol and also known as the Chai Bardo, the soul is warned of dazzling lights and illusions that appear after death, designed to lure it back into rebirth Even the early Christian thinker, Origen, also known as Origen Adamantius, entertained the idea of pre-existence and cycles of embodiment, teachings later condemned as heresy. But why such eagerness to erase these teachings? Because fear of death is the strongest chain of all, and once a soul breaks it, it slips beyond control. A soul convinced it must return again and again to learn lessons is a soul unlikely to rebel. But a soul that remembers that it was never meant to be trapped, that it belongs to eternity, becomes dangerous. Dangerous not only to the rulers of this world, but to the Demiurge itself. I think the Gnostics understood this, that's why they saw themselves as exiles.
I have written a lot on this subject and it's getting late. It's a lot more to explore here, including the final test with the Demiurge itself. I'm just curious if you have any questions.
Exactly! I don't see anything wrong with your account so it may just be one of the site oddities. You can go to c/Meta with the alt, and try creating a post with title and text as "Test", and if that works you can change the text to whatever question you have of admin; and if it doesn't you can message the mods of Meta, which include a copy to admin, though they've been a bit slow lately. Sometimes, not always, I can find someone who can help a technically stranded user if you want me to intervene.
Funny thing, all NDEs by definition involve people choosing not to continue with the light, because if they did we wouldn't hear back from them. This logically indicates that we can't judge the light as a trap (a negative), only as an experience that most people don't leave for whatever reason. The other primary aspect of NDEs, when it's not the light, is the pain, and those who have experienced that and succeeded in not continuing with it speak of it as to be avoided, whether or not they change their lives to avoid it in the future. While we can't judge that either, the testimony of the light as "good" and the pain as "evil" is exceptionally strong, myriads of reported cases that almost always fall in one of those two categories.
Skeptically, if NDEs don't reflect ultimate truth any more than our daily experience (technically they don't), that isn't overwhelming evidence for or against a particular conclusion about them. The line of evidence I go with is that logic dictates either there is a Greatest Thing (Monad) or nothing can be said to exist (nihilism), and that perfectly aligns with the NDE evidence. If we decided to be skeptical of the NDE light, we would still have the duty to rightly reflect the Monad in us regardless, and I think that practice in life will guide us aright when the trial of death comes. So it's fine to use skepticism to pare alternatives down, but if you pare everything then Nihilism is left, and if you uphold the Monad then attributes keep emanating from it that cannot be pared away and prove it as the source of all diversity. So if reincarnation was a trap, the best remedy would be right living today, and that's pretty much of what the Hindus say and they're the deepest thinkers on reincarnation.
If the Pharisees had the (knowledge) key to escape and hid it, its evidence would still be present in their system somewhere, wouldn't it? If we take Jesus's reported teaching in gospels and apocrypha at face value, he is pretty straightforward about epignosis (and the OT has many cognate teachings, starting with binah, da'ath, mada', sekhel), that he gives it freely by revelation (Matt. 11:27, Luke 24:31). What he tells us quietly we are free to proclaim loudly. So I think that knowing the Son, emulating the Christ, is that key to knowledge, and those Pharisees (not all) who rejected their traditions about Christ were the ones who hid it.
Origen syncretized the reward/punishment afterlife with the cyclical by theorizing (though not totally committing) that the righteous soul after a period of reward might lapse back and then would enter another cycle, which might also reincarnate. What happened afterward was that his corpus was widely respected but some took the cyclic teaching heavily and the church chose to issue a condemnation that moderated two extremes: they did not condemn Origen or his teaching in particular, but they did condemn an unspecified "corrupt apokatastasis" while holding that there was a valid and incorrupt apokatastasis. So it is left ambiguous what exactly they condemned. Personally I think it was the form of the teaching where individuation is erased as a phenomenon, because they were still holding onto echoes of gilgul where individuation is respected but the oversoul is still learning collectively. The immediate reason was that removal of individual responsibility was observed to encourage licentious living and so it was very practical, not theoretical. That again goes back to the best preparation being righteous living (pursuit of truth at all costs), and then whatever awaits one is as strong as possible in the grace God gives. Particularly, the early church was, I think, unanimous that martyrs had zero fear of death, that they were sustained by visions of Christ to endure great torments and that union with Christ is a form of remembering the preexistence as a concept in the Monadic consciousness.
Now, you're proposing a narrative where a later legalist church has learned tools of control from the Roman empire, and where they play up the fear of death for this purpose, which shifts the focus of righteous living toward legalism (human-verified righteousness) rather than Christian liberty (divine-verified righteousness). That phenomenon is present but I don't see it in the Origen story. The story of all the gnostics who did teach a trap in the afterlife is, I think, separate because it was almost complete by the 3rd century and the Origen kerfuffle was quite later (you might argue that Clement of Alexandria first syncretized gnosticism into a system that later became Origenism, but it had lost all of the character you're seeing in it and only retained echoes in their sophisticated collations).
But that still leaves the core unsettled. If one doesn't know a goal, one's category would be "seeker", one who hasn't found. If one thinks advancing toward the light is a trap, and one can be confident advancing toward the pain is certainly a trap, one is seeking what other alternative there is on either NDE or Scripture or Apocrypha evidence. This leads to ternary systems but they seem to come much later and I'm not sure what analogues they have in the gnostic and proto-Christian period.
Now something fresh comes to mind, and since I'm already typing at length I'll include it. It might be possible that the "good ending" includes the choice of the best eternal existences, which would be the Pauline category "whether in the body or out of the body I can't tell". Perhaps the individual can choose to restore the matrix, in its perfected form, building from the DNA stored by the earth, or can choose the opposite, to release the DNA and to retain a pure spiritual form. That would certainly remove the chief scandal between the gnostics and the traditionals! I'd want to run that idea through a few filters, but that might be the character of what you appear to want to describe. It's not literal anywhere that "approaching light" automatically equals "flesh trap"; I've generally presumed that flesh as we know it isn't flesh as it will be revealed (here another Pauline concept intervenes, the "spiritual body"; but let's take it from Peter instead, who prophesied that even pigs can have pure, kosher bodies, Acts 10). So while the gnostics and the trads agree that the present flesh is to be deprecated, the resolution might be that we need not argue over the question of whether anyone is or isn't forced to take flesh up again (even if it's transfigured). Perhaps it's a liberty issue.
So I probably have several questions, so I'll try to focus them. So far you're narrating and really so am I. What's most unanswered to me is where the core teaching is to be found. What is the path to be taken to achieve one's heart's desire? And what is the nature of that desire? I haven't gleaned those, and at risk of being wrong I'll say it appears the path you recommend is to Know certain rules in the hope of remembering them in a postdeath confrontation, which would imply that one's duty in this life is to constantly study postdeath rules and would make it hard to live in the present. I've proposed instead that the entire life is about learning right living now and that all postdeath issues will be addressed by the preparations we make now and the patterns and disciplines that lead to the postdeath decisions. (In the same way, what I practice causes what I perceive myself doing in dreams: I have better dreams when I am practicing right living, because in the dream my unconscious habitually selects the right option without conscious will.) As to the second question, perhaps my untested suggestion that the best state is where the soul can choose its physical form or lack thereof might appeal to you. I don't know if I'd formally accept the suggestion myself, but since it has come to mind it can be tested like everything.
Last side point, just as a matter of politely requesting that you could do me a favor for my own sensibilities' sake. When you're speaking of the character you call demiurge, could you please stick to names I agree apply to that character (such as Samael or satan or Saklas), since it doesn't matter to you what you call him but it does matter to me? I only ask as an unimportant but helpful conversational bridge; if not I can accommodate but it might go slower.
I don't think it's the platform. I believe the issue is at my end. Anyway not much I can do about this for now, so I just have to live with it.
I agree "right living" is absolutely the way to go. I don't find that to be much of a challenge for me... not any longer. The first advice I would give anyone is stop lying. Don’t even tell white lies.
Possibly, but not in plain sight. And access to the Vatican Library is limited to accredited researchers. And US has something called Sensitive compartmented information (SCI). SCI is not a classification, it is high-level clearance.
IMO, the church didn't learn from the Roman empire, the church was built as an institution to serve the empire. This was one of Paul's "innovations". Paul was focused on organization and structure. Jesus and his followers were very egalitarian. They didn't believe in hierarchy and shared everything in common. They lived simply. They didn't build institutions. But Paul insists that you need hierarchy and organization and structure to spread the message effectively. You need bishops and deacons and churches and formal procedures. So he's building churches all around the Roman Empire. He's creating an organizational structure. He's establishing protocols. This is not spiritual teaching. This is institution building.
Going back to NDEs and if you read carefully their stories, the first thing you see is a light, radiant, irresistible. It draws you closer. Loved ones appear smiling, calling your name. A warmth fills you, and for a moment, you are certain this is heaven, this is home. But this may not be a light, for not all that shines is light. IMO, it is very possible this tunnel of light is a structure, a construction, a luminous snare woven by the archons to recycle you back into the cycle of death and rebirth. The comforting voices may not be your ancestors at all, but projections, illusions crafted to keep you from questioning where you truly are. The Hypostasis of the Archons talks of rulers who bind humanity in forgetfulness. The Apocryphon of John describes how the Demiurge fashioned the soul's prison, surrounding it with layers of deception. The Pistis Sophia, hints at the perilous journey of the soul through realms of judgement and false lights. So, yeah I think it's literal.
So, why does the light appear so irresistible? Why do souls return so willingly? perhaps it's the genius of the illusion. It appeals to your deepest longing, the longing to be safe, to be loved, to belong and be reunited with source. What better bait than the faces of those you cherished in life? What stronger tether than the promise of reunion? So, maybe the first part of the illusion is seduction, the dazzling light, the false reunion, then the second part is entanglement. There is a parallel with what we can observe the TPTB and their actions in our world today. The archons are forces who question, judge and weigh the soul, not to guide it toward liberation, but to bind it more tightly to the cycle of matter. Have you ever heard the sentence "life review"? NSDs describe being shown their deeds, feeling their emotions replayed, and being told that they must learn more lessons. But who is conducting this review? the archons, who are the judges, which is something that is hidden. The Gnostics would say this judgement does not come from the true source, but from the counterfeit rulers of this world. Judgement, even when it feels like it comes from the soul itself, is still part of the illusion. By convincing the soul that it has failed, that it must return to correct its mistakes, the archons ensure the cycle of reincarnation never ends. This makes sense to me, that's exactly what I would do if I was a parasite, an archon. I would want to make sure the supply of energy never ends. I think in the movie Matrix machines use humans as batteries not because humans make a good power source, but because doing this allows the machines to avoid committing genocide, as would otherwise be required by their laws.
This is not exactly correct. But, I will elaborate on this later, in a different message.
The demiurge (Greek demiurgos) is the being who created the world in Gnosticism. So, when referring to Gnostics manuscripts & texts it's very hard to replace Demiurge with something else. I'll try using Satan wherever makes sense. Outside of the Gnostics texts I have no issue using a different name. How about Lucifer, the god worshipped by Freemasons? that according to many high level Freemasons themselves. “That which we must say to a crowd is – We worship a God, but it is the God that one adores without superstition. To you, Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th degrees – The Masonic Religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian Doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay whose deeds prove his cruelty, perfidy and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion for science, would Adonay and his priests, calumniate him? Yes, Lucifer is God" - Albert Pike 33° Freemason, Morals and Dogma page 321
Institutionalization took 300 years and has many contributors. But primitive Christianity had organic structure. Jesus says have deacons, Matt. 20:26, 23:11; the Twelve appointed servants with this function, Acts 6:1-6 (while Saul was still threatening murderously). The Eleven count themselves bishops and establish the appointment of new ones, Acts 1:20; Peter also affirms Jesus as bishop, 1 Peter 2:25. Jesus built a church, Matt. 16:18, 18:17; the apostles affirmed it, Acts 2:47, etc.; and Luke calls the structure plural churches of the brothers right at the time Saul gets saved, Acts 9:31; and John and Jesus confirm this plural structure repeatedly in Rev. 1-3 and 22. Procedure is fluid but I don't see a special difference between Paul being procedural and any others; the biggest procedure appears to be the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15, where Paul and many other church leaders all had equal standing. So I can be anti-institutionalism while still affirming that Jesus wanted a little free organic structure.
Okay, will look into it in time.
I can't logically conclude that. 100% of our evidence is from those who didn't stay with the light, so in all those cases the person avoids a cycle of reincarnation. As for the rest we can't use the light evidence to determine their fates because they don't return or provide evidence; we can only use general data about reincarnation. But I don't know that it's that important; verifiable facts are important.
Yes, Lucifer is also a good name. I'm just not buying the evidence that he has any creative power.
Now, I've been exploring my hesitant suggestion yesterday, and it might work, namely that the righteous might get to make a free choice as described in Romans 14. Those whose conscience doesn't want a body of flesh might, in the apokatastasis, get the right not to carry one, while those whose conscience isn't troubled might get the right to carry one, and each is fully convinced in his own conscience and neither deprecates the other. I'm still exploring whether that's a useful theology otherwise, but in this case it really breaks down the wall between traditional and gnostic views of the corruption of the present universe because everyone can get what they want.