Osbert

My English often lets me down, I understand and I do not understand what you are saying, I agree that it may be a way to identify with "consciousness".

But what kind of or whose consciousness ? Is the " I " speaking on whose behalf ?

Is it speaking "as if" it were Sin? Lust? Love? ...What?
Is this what they would say?

There cannot be many things that can claim to be all the attributes that Thunder is claiming for itself.

The poetry in the message would need to be understood and impress its chosen readers. It must be aiming to a discerned audience.

Maybe I am too innocent but I do not understand why you think it monstrous, maybe vain and self opinionated ?

gurugeorge

Consciousness in general, considered in the abstract. Perception is happening for you, for me, for any sensitive being. In terms of the sheer fact that anything is perceived at all, anywhere, every consciousness is on a level with every other. And this fact of anything being known or perceived at all is a mystery on a par with the other great mystery - that anything exists at all.

I think some of it will be "terms of art" for the mystico-religious community that produced the text, so some of the terminology will be opaque to us until more is known about the community that used the text, some of those "terms of art" will likely refer to the results of certain practices undergone. (This metaphorical use of language is common in mysticisms, e.g. Buddhist, Daoist, Christian.)

I don't think it's in any way a philosophical treatise that's putting forward any bold or novel propositions or arguments. It's basically reiterating a philosophical triviality - that the Universe is all things, good and bad, and that consciousness reflects all things indiscriminately.

The Universe as a whole does; Consciousness, being a faculty the Universe has of canvassing its own possibilities, also does.

Yes, as I said, some of it will be jargon, and it would be foolish to try and interpret it too precisely on the basis of a sketchy understanding (as some Western translators have done with Eastern religions), only to find, later in the day, that this was actually meant, and not that.

It's just poetic licence to get the message across: mysticism is "transgressive", it doesn't care about good and evil (although mystics often behave in a loving way, they don't always, sometimes they are selfish), it just cares about the experience/understanding that one is God/the Universe/the Absolute (whatever the ultimate term in the culture is).

The uncensored message is that it really is ok with God that people die horribly, children are raped and tortured, lives made an unending torment of tedium by stupid political ideas, etc., etc. It's just shit happening, just a pattern of being, a pattern of existence, with no intrinsic moral significance whatsoever.

Morality is our game, it only means something to us as human beings (i.e. smart, symbol-using, social animals living on this Earth). The passions morality arouses, the intense desire to eradicate such evils from the world, etc., etc. - these are things that could only happen to an animal, with a specific perspective on things, in terms of which things may be ranked according to preference.

Apostate1970

I am basically in agreement with gurugeorge. However I would put much of what he says in less provocative language by saying that the poem is asking merely for an opening of our minds to see the beauty/purpose/meaning in myriad circumstances that we otherwise might not... even when we witness horrific evil we can become conscious of good that is still close by or juxtaposed to it if in nothing more than our reaction. We are being asked to question the validity of our selections and discriminations. This is a theme you mentioned too Osbert. I also think that the poem is densely laden with more conventional meanings as well... meanings that can be taken as moral exhortations. But I won't elaborate on this because there's just no room for it here.

Turning to the poll results themselves... I am a little hesitant to bring this up because I think that too much speculation on it at this still-early stage could skew the results. But I have two, possibly complementary, theories as to why the results are coming out as they are.

Haha! I've just turned on my music and out pops my "psychedelic" playlist. Right now it's In the Morning of the Magicians, by The Flaming Lips... check it out... great song and totally relevant to this discussion. Looks like George Harrison's My Sweet Lord is up next. Here's another if anyone wants to play name-that-tune.

"If you understand or if you don't, if you believe or if you don't... there's a universe of justice, and the eyes of truth are always watching you."





Hmmm... hope this doesn't become known as "The Magic Brownie Thread"... I personally don't do anything like that.

Osbert

Dear gurugeorge,

I want to thank you for the clear delivery of your opinion in this matter and if the main element of my curiosity were morality or sobriety I would agree with your words entirely.

I was and remain curious in what you call "terms of art" or "jargon"; I would dearly love to decipher / decrypt the document that Apostate 1970 posted.

I was merely wandering if there had been an interpretation of the text somewhere but it doesn't look like it.
You are probably correct in saying that it would be foolish to try and interpret it.
Best wishes.

gurugeorge

In the "standard" edition of the Nag Hammadi texts there's an introduction in which an academic gives the general academic consensus (which is by no means settled), and there's a small bibilography attached. If you want more detail that would be a good place to start.

Chili

Never read the poem but I would call her Mary who is the most enigmatic of all women for the simple reason that she is the full extent of our own soul from where she is ever so close but yet so far because we cannot make our soul the subject of our inquiry. She is our seat of wisdom and our own gate to heaven which still is smaller than the eye of a neeldle yet opens wide if she wants us in. I would love to do explication of it and may just do that for my own sake and if I have the time I will post it here.

She may be called Sophia but that makes her too distant in our mythology if she is a local girl who made us to be her own.

Apostate1970

This is me once again bumping an old poll I posted so that people unfamiliar with it can enjoy it (or not). Just read as many of the verses in the link in the OP as you want and answer the poll based on that. The book/poem comes I think in three stages though so if you only read so far then you won't get the overall effect. I'd like a larger dataset to confirm or disconfirm a theory I have about who will answer what.