Why Is There Suffering in the World

I received my copy of the hardback of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel in the mail this week, and wow, it’s really beautiful. It’s just as beautiful as I expected it would be. The paper is the heavier and more smooth than the paperback, and the ink is the deluxe application, so the colors of the illustrations are just as bright and beautiful as they are on screen. It’s a really beautiful book. It does cost $45, and you needn’t purchase it. The less expensive versions are just as full of Gnosis-unlocking knowledge. Just wanted you to know. And for all those people who did contribute $50 to getting this book out and in the public space, thank you so much, and your book is in the mail. And now on to today’s discussion. I don’t usually go into history in my books, because I’m presenting the living Gnosis—what we need to know today in order to have a peaceful and meaningful life. I think a lot of people who study Gnosticism are looking backward. They’re thinking of it as a relic. You know, people seem to embrace this whole business about secrecy and what it means to be esoteric, as if Gnosticism is supposed to be a big secret, and that you have to go through various rituals and levels of mastery in order to attain Gnosis. But that is not true at all. Gnosis is inherent in every one of our cells. We are fractals of the Father. We’re fractals of the Fullness of God. We contain all of the information that the Son of God contained, although it’s not unlocked. I’m not claiming that we are all gods, so to speak. That is one of the heresies that the Christian religion says—Oh it’s terrible, those Gnostics, they think they’re all God. Oh, they think they’re all the Son of God. Well, yes and no. We are fractals of the Son of God. We contain all of the bits and pieces that are contained in the Fullness of God, but they are unlocked on a need-to-know basis. It’s no big deal to be considered one of the fractals of God. Even the bacteria are fractals of God. Even the little cells in your body and the little parts inside of your cells, they are also fractals of the Fullness of God. But we have various amounts of those fractals turned on inside of us, depending on where we are and what we do in this universe. So, I don’t know how to be a kidney cell. I really wouldn’t know how to do that if I found myself suddenly miniaturized and stuck into a kidney. I wouldn’t know what my job was or how to interface with my neighbors. But the kidney cells do, because the Aeons that they represent are kidney cells; they know how to be a cell inside of a body. I know how to be a human being on the surface of this Earth planet. All of us human beings know how to be human beings. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to be born and to grow up into this human body and to basically function in society. Although, what we have forgotten is our higher spiritual nature, our higher connection to where we come from and why it is that we’re here on this planet. That’s the only information that I share with you here on Gnostic Insights. It’s the how and why and how-to of the very, very simple piece of information that everyone needs to grasp. Although, even if you never do grasp the gnosis, it doesn’t mean you’re going to hell. It just means you don’t get it. So what is that basic piece of gnosis? Everybody who’s been listening to me for a while, you know this answer by now, right? That basic piece of gnosis is only this: We come from the spiritual realm. We come from the Father and we will return to the spiritual realm. We will return to the Father. We’re not going to be stuck on this “prison planet” forever because the Father and the Fullness are trying to wrap it up. They’ve issued a recall on this material world that we live in. We’re just passing through it. Our ultimate destination is to return to the Fullness of God, which is what we tend to think of as paradise. It’s the reason why this material world is so difficult and is such a challenge to us and can be so disappointing and sad. It’s because we’re comparing this material world in our minds to paradise. See, all of this that’s going on down here, it has all happened before, it will all happen again, but it happens in paradise. There is perfection on the ethereal plane before the Fall. Paradise exists before the original Fall and it coexists up there now. We tend to compare our material plane with paradise. Of course, it always comes up short down here. That’s the connection that we need to remember. We come from above and we will return to above. Every living thing, everything that is not an inert mineral, from the cells on up, from the bacteria on up, the fungi and the birds and the plants, all of the species and phylum on the planet that are living, that can move, that follow the sun, that breathe, that eat, that reproduce—all of the living things come from above and will return to above. So that tells us that paradise, or our afterlife, our ethereal plane, has all of the things that Earth has. It has birds and flowers and trees and dogs and cats and people and mushrooms and slime mold because they’re down here and they’re alive and all life comes from above. That’s what happens at conception. The living life of the Fullness of God is interfaced with the dead material particles of the material world—that’s the subatomic particles, that’s the quantum foam, that’s the atoms and molecules and the minerals and the mineral aggregates and the elements, all the way up through the mineral elements and the rocks and stones. Those are the non-living material that will not go to heaven because above, in the realm of the Father, the ethereal plane, that’s life, light and love and joy. That’s all in the above. That’s where we come from. So that is our expectation but we forget about it. We know it the second we’re conceived and we know it when we’re born. We know it when we’re little babies but the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi says it this way—it says that it’s disappointing down here. It’s a weak basis for life. We are melded to this material plane, the molecules and elements and whatnot that make up our material bodies. So that’s our walking around bodies but the life, the soft and squishy parts, that all comes from above and it will return to above. I read an article this week on academia.edu called Gnosticism in the Roman Church by a gentleman named Stephen Loughran. He was comparing early Gnosticism with the Roman Catholic Church. And he said, “One striking difference between Christianity and Gnosticism regards the nature of deity or God himself. Ask any believing Christian who created the universe and without hesitation that person will answer, well God did of course. Furthermore the God of Christian thought is said to be all powerful and all-knowing, omnipotent and omniscient, and above all perfect and good. This poses several conundrums for many Christians, two of which can be characterized by the often asked questions, if God is good and perfect why is there suffering in the world? And if God is all-powerful how do we account for human free will?” Okay. See, this is easily answered in Gnosticism, although contemporary traditional Christians will not like this answer. But if you have fallen away from Christianity or never joined Christianity because of those two common questions, Why is there suffering? and What about free will? the answer is this: there are many gods. We know there are many gods and that religions all around the world have their various gods. The creator of the material portion of the Earth and of the universe in fact, the creator of the heavens and the Earth—heavens just being our astronomical planets, suns and whatnot—that is a God, that is the creator God. In Gnosticism that God is called the Demiurge. He is not the God Above All Gods. The supreme consciousness, the real Father—when Jesus said, I and my Father are one, if you know me you know my Father—He’s talking about the God Above All Gods. And that God has only… 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