The Nag Hammadi Classical Gnostic Scriptures

Dear Editor

Hidden in a sealed jar among rocks in Nag Hammadi, a northern town in Egypt were sacred Scriptures written thousands of years ago and carefully secured by a holy man who valued these writings.

In 1946 two brothers who were preparing land with their camel loaded with fertilizer, discovered the jar and although fearful, one brother smashed it and out flew fragments of papyrus. The story of these papyrus pieces and how they have eventually been deciphered, compiled and are now in book form in many languages including English is long, arduous and complicated.

However, these amazing Scriptures written in Coptic bring to life the thinking of some of the finest minds that lived during the most inquiring and inspiring periods of history, where new philosophical and psychological understanding had broken new ground.

These ancient Scriptures originally given orally were later influenced by Greek philosophical myths and written down about 180 AD. Christ as ‘Savior’ was introduced into these writings and they were called ‘Gnostic Christian Scriptures’. They also drew upon Platonist interpretation of the creation myths of Plato, while combining them with the book of Genesis.

The word Gnostic is derived from the word Gnosis, that is, leading to knowledge; an act of knowing. This knowledge is personal acquaintance with an object and each may claim to have acquaintance with each other. In this case we have acquaintance with the Light /Life Force whom Christ called His ‘Father’.

There is a difference between ‘believing ‘ there is a God and a ‘knowing’ through experience. An awareness that one has been touched, revived and loved, stimulates happiness that bubbles from inside and is worth all the seeking, asking and knocking that is necessary to find this beautiful bonding. These classical Gnostic Scriptures help us to understand not only Christ’s words, but also many books of the Bible come to life.

A Gnostic Interpretation of Genesis

Having studied Gnostic and Bible Scriptures for so long, I now have an urge to write what I have discovered and how my many questions have been answered. All the discomfort, bewilderment and sometimes indignation has been alleviated, thus compelling me to come to grips with past misconceptions.

The First History
A Discovery of the Light /Life/ Force and Creation

‘Let there be Light’

This Light/Life Force has no defect and lacks nothing, but is utter fullness, completely perfect, unlimited, unfathomable, immeasurable, unreachable (ineffable) and unnameable as nothing was before it to name it. Life/Force is uncontaminated light, holy, pure and incorruptible.

Creation

The ineffable Light/Life Force emanated a ray of Light and over countless light years through the division of cells that were formed through a mixture of chemicals contained in the Light Rays, the universe evolved. Whether the other planets had at one time been inhabited we do not know at present, but we do know that the planets close to us are (without man’s intervention) uninhabitable and chaotic.

Our own earth was a mass of burning fire and there is still a burning core inside. Gradually the surface cooled over time leaving rocks and nourishing elements in the soil that had been formed by the burning lava.

Having been touched by the energizing Rays of the Light/Life Force and with the right conditions e.g. sun, water and soil, different kinds of seeds evolved including herbs, grains, trees, flowers, animals, birds, sea animals and eventually humans.

Men, women and animals were innocent. They had a sense of belonging to and were a part of the Life/Light Force. Death was natural and without fear. There was such an abundance of food and shelter there was no need for animals to kill each other. There were many varieties of fish and plenty of plankton and underwater herbs. The animals and humans lived in peace without fear. It was a simple life, living in harmony with nature, like the eastern ideal where all living things on earth are a part of each other. They depend on all other parts to make up the whole. At death, the flesh simply returns to the soil and the Spirit belonging to the Light/Life Force returns to it’s Source.

This was a period when men and women were in tune with the Infinite, Life/Light Force, the invisible Spirit, that is unknowable, without inferiority and exists alone.

Because of the ‘Spark’ of the Life/Light Force within men and women, they gradually developed and became inventive using metals and gold found in the earth that were beneficial to them. They built homes from trees, mud and mud-bricks, carved and painted messages on rocks, telling the stories of their lives and eventually made signs on cuneiforms and hieroglyphics to communicate their history.

By the time Genesis in the Bible was written there had been many highly developed civilizations and archaeologists are only just uncovering some today. The rise and fall of civilizations are many and some are recorded in the Bible. Archaeologists have their own stories to tell so we are catching a picture of ancient men and women just like the dictionary meaning presents civilizations as being:

• a human society that had a cultural, political and legal organization and an advanced state in social development.
• intellectual, cultural and moral refinement.
• cities or populated areas as contrasted with sparsely inhabited areas or deserts.

To civilize is to bring early man out of animal intelligence and into a state characteristic of civilization, that is, to refine, educate and enlighten. This blessing of refinement was the very essence of the Light/Life Force and it is still present on our earth today.

All civilizations evolve and must go through a process of purification, or they gradually die. This early civilization was a time of self- expression, learning and experiencing life, both for men, women, Gods and Goddesses. However, a dark cloud hovered over them in that ancient world, an omen of upheaval, pain and suffering.

The Second History
The Rise of a God - The Greatest Tragedy of All Time

As humans evolved they became more self-sufficient and gradually lost touch with their ‘Source’ and fell into an ‘Image’ of the Light/Life Force perceiving the ‘Image’ to be their God who claimed to be the Creator of the universe and the only God.

This second history written centuries later introduces this ‘Image’ as a personal God called Lord God. Here we find the creation story in reverse and there is a definite intention to introduce himself as the Creator, with an unnatural concept of creation being immediate as this has a sense of magic.

Gen.Ch.2 v4. ‘This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being’.

Sadly, human beings lost the knowledge of the Light/Life Force. However, there are flashes of revelation in the Old and New Testament of a return to the Infinite, but it is difficult to see unless we read the Gnostic Scriptures.

Humans became an ‘Image’ of the Lord God and descended into an Egoic State.

In place of merging with the Light/Life Force, nature and humans, the people developed a personal ego. They had a mixture of spirituality and a false personal self that took the place of the concept of being a part of the whole.

When men and women replaced their ‘inner space’ where the Light/Life Force had lived, they fell into an ‘Image’ and worshiped this Image as God, thus causing indescribable inner conflict, pain and suffering between good and evil, spirit and ego, life and death. The myth presented in Genesis Ch.2 v 16 & 17 gives clarity.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
The birth of the ego and loss of the Light/Life.

The Tree of Life

This tree represents the Life/Light Force, the Son (Christ), the Holy Spirit and all those who enter into Eternal Life and are fit to be a part of the Perfect Creator, the uncontaminated, incorruptible Light.

The two mythical trees have been placed there for all time and they show us very clearly exactly what happened and what the disturbing result was. However, not all is lost, as there is an escape to this higher consciousness that the Tree of Life offers. We will be studying this aspect at a later time, as at present we have not finished with the ego state.

Gen.2 v 16. ‘Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die’.

The knowledge of the good

The corrupted self slides down to a lower level and requires constant vigilance to stay on the side of good.

• self
• conscience
• free will

The self-awareness of ones own healthy self is rewarding as it is the beginning of finding a true spiritual path.

The awareness of one’s healthy conscience if adhered to, certainly leads to the right road and brings happiness.

The awareness of one's healthy free will, which has the wisdom to choose the best road, will lead to peace.

The Knowledge of Evil

In losing the Light/Light Force, humans lost the sense of their autonomy, power and their beautiful whole self.

The knowledge of evil is the awakening and realization that the ‘ self ’ has lost trust in itself and develops a ‘false self ’, which guards against anyone or anything that threatens it.

This ‘false self ’(the ego) then separates everything into compartments, relegating the good - bad, true – false, light – darkness and so on, thus creating a divided ‘self ’. So, humans have the good side and the bad side of themselves and they spend their lives oscillating between trying to keep the rules of society that restrict them and satisfying their opposite pent up desires and whims. If indulged upon, great pain and frustrations are experienced and this is the prerequisite to compulsions and addictions.

Now the ego dominates and insists on it’s own way and will use subterfuge to have what it wants. The ego is self-serving and sections off the conscience, relegating it to the unconscious thus rendering it useless. The result is clearly seen that the person is incapable of knowing that they are doing wrong. The ‘false ego’ continues to control the person and eventually they have no free will and cannot make good decisions as the powerful ego is totally in control.

As this Lord God claimed to be the Creator of the universe, men and women turned to Him for wisdom and understanding, only to find that two laws must be obeyed, that is, worship and obedience to Him, otherwise they will suffer retribution, guilt and negative emotions.

He also claimed to create a man called Adam and took a part of his body to make a woman called Eve. This is certainly true when we take it metaphorically, as we now have a God who has re-defined, re-educated and re-enlightened the people. This change did not bring peace, refinement of thought or expression of freedom and fulfillment. It was a hijacking of the authentic Creator, the Light /Life Force and this was the beginning of a Dark Age that we are still struggling with to this very day.

The result of this paradigm shift so long ago is well documented and thoroughly researched in the book ‘The Guru Papers’, Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad.( Although this book has not set out to specifically speak about ‘The Lord God’ it certainly identifies the problem of dominance, which is the result of the rise of the false self ).

Here we learn of the many traps and hidden agendas that developed and redeveloped over time and is very much alive and well in our present day.

The papers uncover:

• control and surrender
• self-centeredness
• recognizing authoritarian control
• religious ploys - inducing surrender
• maintaining dominance

Here are only a few of the areas that this excellent book reveals.

Humans therefore lived with a ‘false self’, worshiped a ‘false God’ and were enmeshed in double standards of deceits, hypocrisies, pain and suffering.

The rise of the Lord God was a desperate attempt to keep society from becoming chaotic and anarchic, so they gradually formed more and more government controls, laws and punishments for this out of control behavior.

The Lord God was really a disenfranchised angel that knew about ‘justice’, but was low ranking and saw himself as the only power, so therefore he was the only God and wanted complete authority over all humans. He set up a system of control and punishment, convincing many that he was the only God.

Sadly, the more out of control humans became the greater the exercise of power was discharged and over time the Lord God’s character became despotic. By the time Noah was born, life was completely chaotic where anarchy reigned and violence ruled.

The next series will be the flood, Noah and his family.

Hilda Fairley