Pascal's Wager

The big day has finally arrived! The book is ready. It’s in publication. It will be posted on Amazon for sale. The soonest they’ll get it up for me is on the 28th of August. That’s Wednesday, the 28th of August. You’ll be able to buy the paperback version of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel for only $24. That’s the least I’m allowed to sell it for by Amazon. So, meanwhile, as a bonus, I did format the book as an e-book, and it is already posted. So if you were to go to Amazon now, you would be able to buy the e-book of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel for only $9. It’s available today for $9, or you can wait until Wednesday and get it for $24. A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel (A Simple Gnostic Gospel) – Kindle edition by Ropp, Cyd , Ropp, Cyd, Puett, Bill. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. And later this week, I will also format the book as a glorious, very expensive hardback, and I will release the hardback for the least amount of money that Amazon makes me release it for. I don’t know what that will be just yet until it’s formatted. But the hardback will differ from the paperback in that the hardback will be on the top quality high-gloss paper with the top quality ink and a hardback binding. Probably twice as much as the paperback sells for. I don’t know how these things work. We’ll see. I’ve already ordered the copies that I will sign and mail to the people who have contributed the $50 donation that I appreciate so much. And those are in the mail to me already as author preview copies. So you’ll be able to get those very soon as well. This week, I’m going to talk about some philosophers, mathematicians, logicians, and their faith in the Father. Because so often people accuse us believers of being irrational, of being ignorant and foolish. And I want to tell you that that isn’t true. Indeed, you know, we follow the Father above. And remember, His emissary is Logos, which means logic and reason. So it is not unreasonable to believe in the eternal life and to believe in the Father and the ethereal plane. It’s based upon reason. The Father is love, but Logos is logic and reasonableness. And we need both in our lives—love and reason. Reason without love is a modern and postmodern condition. It privileges supposedly reasonable logical assumptions and actions, but without believing in the Father and without the love of God to guide your heart in truth and faith, caring and compassion. We have to meld reason with love. Otherwise, it very easily turns into dictatorships and totalitarian rule. This week, an essay posted on Noema magazine online by Nathan Gardels had a quote from Erwin Schrodinger. Erwin Schrodinger, the pioneering quantum physicist, postulated that “consciousness is a fundamental feature, the fabric of the universe, parceled out through the individuated experience of awareness.” Schrodinger was no lightweight when it comes to thinking. Now, to counterpose that, the opposite of that is materialism—is not believing that consciousness is the ground state of the universe. Gerald Edelman, a Nobel neurobiologist considered the most prominent materialist in the field, believed consciousness is “entirely a function of embodiment.” In other words, that consciousness is a byproduct of the gray portion of our brains. This is generally what neurobiologists think. That’s why they can treat animals with such cruelty and have such disregard to any living things, because they don’t believe they are conscious. They usually think consciousness arises from the more complex neurobiology of the human condition. But Schrodinger wrote in his essay that “the total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings. Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms, for consciousness is absolutely fundamental.” That was a quote from this NOEMA magazine that is posted online, and the name of the article is Who Knows What Consciousness Is? I’ve been feeling for some time that I should share with you Blaise Pascal and his idea that’s called Pascal’s Wager. Have you ever heard of Pascal’s Wager? Now, I have a true believer attitude towards the Father. However, I must admit that Pascal’s Wager has often come to mind during my lifetime over the course of 70 years. I often think of Pascal’s Wager, and so to me it’s pretty important to share it with you. I’ve hesitated sharing it with you because, well, it kind of seems like a fallback position rather than just going straight for believing in the Father and the gnosis that comes from the Father, because this is a like a fail-safe fallback. Pascal’s Wager basically says that you have nothing to lose by believing in God, and you have everything to gain. So let me explain some of this to you. By the way, I’m sometimes kind of shy about sharing the fact that I’m a Christian, that I believe in Jesus. You know, when I first started reading the Nag Hammadi scriptures and the Tripartite Tractate, as I’ve mentioned, I set it aside for five years. I had thoroughly read and highlighted, notated and diagrammed the Nag Hammadi, and pretty much came up with everything that I present now in my teaching and in my books, but it frightened me because I did not want to be accused of being a false prophet or a false teacher. I do not want to have the accusations of leading people astray. I would not want to lead anyone into hell. Obviously, that would be the farthest thing from my thought. And by now, as a Gnostic, I don’t even think that hell is an accurate depiction of what happens to people who don’t believe at the time of death. A truly loving God and eternal punishment are inconsistent. What we humans call “justice” cannot override the love of God and the redemption from sin through Christ. The Lake of Fire is not eternal and everlasting. The Lake of Fire is Aeonic purging; that is the more accurate translation of the Coptic Greek in which the New Testament was written. In the original Greek, the word that has been translated as “eternal” is aionios, aeonic, and aeonic can either refer to a period of time or as relating to the Aeons of the Fullness. Two previous episodes of Gnostic Insights cover this concept in detail; you can listen or read about it by clicking on links in this transcript to Aeons, Not Ages and Overcoming Death-Follow the Light. So, it’s a purging fire to purge away our false beliefs and our meme shroud that has deluded us in our lifetime. The Lake of Fire is a cleansing. It’s a baptism. And the more unbelief you hold, the more incorrect memes you have enshrouded your Self with, the more purging there is to be done when you cross over. And that’s very unpleasant. I would not want to lead anyone into that kind of purging. And I myself, if I were a big false teacher, false prophet here, I’d have a lot to account for when I cross over. And I do not want to bring that upon my Self. I am hoping that I spread the truth and the love of the Father. So something that occasionally crosses my mind and gives me pause is that it’s all well and good for me to share the Gnostic gospel with you and to present this alternative cosmology and cosmogony of the ethereal realm that differs from what is translated into the Old and New Testament. It’s all well and good for me because I’m a born again Christian. I have been saved. I am going to heaven. And I know that as a certainty. But what about you? If you don’t have that certainty, if you are not born again, what if I lead you into error through the Gnostic gospel and you don’t have true belief in Christ as your fallback position? Well, then that’s the worst possible thing. So that is what I am attempting to avoid. And it sometimes niggles at me that it’s well and good for me to talk about the Gnostic gospel because I am saved. I am a born again Christian baptized in the Holy Spirit and have a surety of faith in heaven because I’m under the wing of Christ. But what about you if you’re not… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cydropp.substack.com/subscribe