Way of the Hermit

S2E4: Gnosis Reborn

• Dr. David Brown & Gene Lawson • Season 2 • Episode 4

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In this episode of "Way of the Hermit," David and Gene dive down the rabbit hole, into the world of Gnosticism and its connection to Freemasonry. They explore how Gnostic teachings, once considered heretical, were driven underground and lay buried for centuries until their rediscovery in the 20th century. They discuss the core principles of Gnosticism, emphasizing its focus on direct inner knowledge of the divine (gnosis) rather than adherence to dogma or external rules.

The episode traces the historical suppression of Gnostic ideas by early Christian literalists and examines key figures in Gnostic thought, including Simon Magus, Philo of Alexandria, and G.R.S. Mead. David and Gene highlight the significance of the Nag Hammadi texts discovered in 1945, which provided unprecedented insights into Gnostic Christianity. They also explore the symbolic interpretations of religious and Masonic stories, arguing that these allegories contain deeper truths about human consciousness and spiritual awakening.

The discussion draws intriguing parallels between Gnostic concepts and Masonic symbolism, suggesting that Freemasonry is perhaps a form of Gnosticism. They propose that the three degrees of the Masonic Blue Lodge, as well as the Masonic quest for the “Lost Word”, the three names of God and three temples in the Scottish Rite, correspond to the three stages of Gnostic awakening.

Deep Dive:

Nag Hammadi's Gnostic Revelations

Chapters:

  • 01:15 Introduction
  • 01:36 Gnosticism
  • 04:02 Masonry is Gnosticism
  • 06:33 The Key to the Mysteries
  • 09:56 Church of the Antichrist
  • 13:19 Simon Magus
  • 15:49 Philo of Alexandria
  • 18:05 G.R.S. Mead
  • 21:21 Nag Hammadi
  • 24:45 Conclusions

Resources:

01:15 Introduction
   
Gene: Hello Dave.
   
David: Hello Gene:
   
Gene: Are you ready to uncork this bottle?
   
David: Sure.
   
Gene: And let the genie out.
   
David: Oh right. Yes. But before we get started, I want to remind everyone that Show Notes, Chapter Markers, and Transcripts for all of our episode are available on our web site, WayOfTheHermit.com. In the last episode, we began our discussion of Gnosticism and showed some of its relationship to the Scottish Rite. In this episode, we’re going to dive down the rabbit hole, and talk about how these heretical teachings were driven underground, and about how the wisdom that they contained laid buried for centuries.
   
Gene: And that was what I was referring to earlier. Two brothers uncovered the Nag Hammadi texts in 1946, which were in a sealed urn. The story goes that they were at first afraid to break it open, because they thought that a Djinn, a “genie,” might be trapped inside, and that breaking it open could release it back into the world.
   
David: And… they were right, but not in the way they were thinking. They did unleash ideas that had been, like I said, driven underground, literally. The community that buried those texts were hoping that, like a time capsule, they might survive and be opened in a time that was more open to their message.
   
Gene: Or at least at a time when you won’t be thrown in prison or executed for possessing them.
   
David: Yes. That, too. But before, we talk about that discovery at Nag Hammadi, we need to back up and tell a bit about why that discovery was so important and why the ideas they contained were considered so dangerous.
   
01:36 Gnosticism
   
Gene: Where would you like to start?
   
David: Let’s define our terms, and let’s start with defining what we mean by Gnosticism. And some of the books that we’re using in this episode are “The Gnostics: The First Christian Heretics,” “Novo Clavis Esoterika”,  and “Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians.” I’ve linked to all of these books in the Show Notes.
   
Gene: I’ve got a quote to get started with from the book “The Gnostics: The First Christian Heretics”.
   
David: OK.
   
Gene: It says - “The term ‘Gnostic’ has traditionally referred to the various groups which flourished in the early centuries of the Common Era and which stressed the importance of gnosis – direct inner knowledge of God – above dogma. The early Church Fathers condemned them as heretics and, until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices, it was largely through their tirades against Gnosticism that the various Gnostic teachers and schools were known.”
   
David: And I have a quote from that book, too, that says - “Despite the writings of the early Church Fathers, most of whom were fanatics with an axe to grind, the term ‘Gnostic’ was not universally used by Gnostic teachers such as Valentinus and Marcion… nor by Church apologists such as Tertullian and Irenaeus, who often called them simply ‘heretics’. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the Gnostics themselves were comprised of diverse groups which did not have a uniform set of beliefs; indeed, diversity is one of the hallmarks of Gnosticism.”
   
Gene: Which would seem to make it more difficult to wrap your hands around what Gnosticism means, but it’s actually the thing that sets Gnosticism apart from what you’d think of as a “religion,” because there isn’t a fixed canon of writings that everyone is expected to accept.
   
David: Right. Another quote from that book says - “the Gnostics were mocked by the early Church Fathers for their ability to produce ‘a new gospel every day’, but this would appear to be a misunderstanding of the Gnostic position, which generally held that the writing of such texts was the proof that the true God was speaking through the believer and that what the true God had to say could never be confined to just four gospels, canonical or otherwise.”
   
Gene: So, in Gnosticism, there can be as many stories as there are Gnostics, or more.
   
David: Right, because you are the book. You’re supposed to be a “living testament” to your experience.
   
Gene: Which we talked about last time, Gnosis is an experience, not a belief.
   
04:02 Masonry is Gnosticism
   
David: And, because there isn’t a fixed canon of texts, it’s understood that each person has to build their own temple, so to speak. Gnosticism isn’t what you’d normally think of as a ”religion.”
   
Gene: No, it’s not, which is the same thing that Albert Pike said about the Scottish Rite in “Morals and Dogma”, that Freemasonry is not a religion, but that it preserves the core of all religions. A quote from “Morals and Dogma” in the 14th Degree of Perfect Elu says - “It is the universal, eternal, immutable religion, such as God planted in the heart of universal humanity. No creed has ever been long-lived that was not built on this foundation.” So, what is this “core truth” that Masonry has supposedly preserved in its rituals?
   
David: The “core truth” of all religions is the mystical tradition that every religion has for those “with ears to hear”. It’s the esoteric message hinted at in all religious texts, the path to Gnosis, to self-knowledge, to our own divine nature. Here’s a quote from “Morals and Dogma” in the 17th Degree - Knight of the East and West - “The writings of the Apostles… in addressing themselves to mankind in general, enunciated only the articles of the vulgar faith; but transmitted the mysteries of knowledge to superior minds, to the Elect, mysteries handed down from generation to generation in esoteric traditions; and to this science of the mysteries they gave the name of Gnosis.”
   
Gene: And I have a quote from page 233 of “Novo Clavis Esoterika” that says - “Laying aside the restricted point of view of Gnosticism, we must stress above all the fact that the goal of Masonic initiation, as of all other initiations, is the attainment of integral knowledge, which is Gnosis, in the true sense of the word. It is precisely this Gnosis that, properly speaking, constitutes the Masonic secret, which is why this secret is essentially incommunicable.”
   
David: So, the “Royal Secret” of Masonry is Gnosis. And the path to it, is the same path traversed by esoteric initiates of the mystical schools behind every religion - the symbolic and allegorical reading of sacred scriptures.
   
Gene: You know, Masonic initiates are told over and over in the degrees, that the teachings of Masonry are hidden behind symbols and allegories… that the stories are not to be read as historical accounts.
   
06:33 The Key to the Mysteries
   
David: But, do you think it’s understood that this isn’t just talking about Masonry, but is supposed to apply to the stories of your own religious faith?
   
Gene: Ah, good point. It would seem to follow to do that, but probably not, because that would appear to devalue the stories… I mean, admitting that they may not be literally true.
   
David: But, it doesn’t devalue those stories to read them symbolically, it makes them much more valuable, if you have the key to unlock what they’re really talking about.
   
Gene: And the key is, you have to turn them around and realize that what they are talking about is something subtle, because as we’ve mentioned, the people who wrote these texts were not idiots, they were some of the greatest minds of their respective ages… but anyway, the key is that they are talking about things that are inside, not outside of you. The stories are about  your mind, your consciousness, your life.
   
David: Right. As we’ve talked about before, myths are stories that may never have actually occurred, but they are always true, because you’re living them. They are the archetypes or patterns that we live out in our thoughts, our actions, and in our lives.
   
Gene: So, going back to the original question, how do you want to define Gnosticism?
   
David: I’m drawing primarily from the book “The Gnostics,” in defining it as the belief that we can have an inner experience of divinity, called Gnosis, that once and for all ends any doubt about the reality of God, or the “Divine Essence”. Gnosticism about an experience, not dogma or a specific set of rules to follow.
   
Gene: That makes me think of the quote from 1 Corinthians - “Everything is permissible, but not everything is expedient (or beneficial).”
   
David: That’s true. The main point is just that Gnosticism is about a personal experience as opposed to a belief or a certain set of rules. It’s funny, both Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell were asked in interviews near the end of their lives, if they believed in God, and they answered the same way - “I don’t need to believe because I know.”
   
Gene: And, the Gnostics called those that had experienced this inner awaking of Gnosis, which means “Knowledge”, as Knowers.
   
David: So, that’s the defining characteristic, at least in our discussions of Gnosticism, the belief in an inner awaking called Gnosis. But, ultimately it is about the actual experience of awakening, not just believing in it, or stories about other people who did it. And it isn’t restricted to one religion, it is the mystical tradition that is both concealed and revealed in every religion’s sacred scriptures. Because what they point to is the spiritual experience, a real communion, a mingling of essences with the divine.
   
Gene: AKA - the “Sacred Marriage”.
   
David: Yes.
   
Gene: So, according to this definition, Kabbalah is Gnostic Judaism, the Sufi’s and the Druze are branches of Gnostic Islam, and the Nag Hammadi texts are from different sects of Gnostic Christianity.
   
David: Exactly. And what links them together is the idea of a personal inner awakening, which can be attained by degrees, and that the process is communicated to initiates through symbolic reading of sacred scriptures.
   
09:56 Church of the Antichrist
   
Gene: And that’s again the key to it all really - allegorical versus literal readings. In referring to sacred scriptures of the world, Pike starts the Master Mason lecture in “Morals and Dogma” by saying that - “To understand literally the symbols and allegories… is willfully to close our eyes against the Light. To translate the symbols into the trivial and commonplace, is the blundering of mediocrity.”
   
David: And in the 13th Degree of “Royal Arch of Solomon” he says - “So it has always been that allegories, intended as vehicles of truth, to be understood by the sages, have become or bred errors, by being literally accepted.”
   
Gene: In the book “Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians”, they put forward an argument, that the point in time when the official church doctrine shifted to a literalist interpretation, was the break between what they call the “true” and “false” religions.
   
David: Yeah. I’ve heard that phrasing before. That’s in the chapter called “The Church of the Anti-Christ,” which, as you can tell from the title, has a pretty brutal assessment of the literalist viewpoint. I’ve got a quote from that chapter, too, that says - “Once the Jesus myth had been set in an historical context, it was only a matter of time before a group of Christians began to interpret it as a record of actual events. By the middle of the second century a Literalist school of Christianity had begun to emerge in Rome, with autocrats such as Irenaeus as its spokesmen. The Gnostics' understanding of the Jesus story as an initiation allegory leading to salvation through Gnosis was replaced by the Literalists' idea of salvation through belief in an historical Messiah.”
   
Gene: But, of course, the myth of a dying and rising god was nothing new. Almost every culture has one.
   
David: Because it represents an internal truth.
   
Gene: Right, but from a literalist standpoint, it’s a problem, because there are all of these other almost identical stories, which happened before yours.
   
David: Yes. The Dionysus stories and the stories of Mithras are almost point for point with the stories about Jesus. That’s a problem.
   
Gene: But as John Adams said - “Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.” Another quote from “The Lost Goddess” says that while acknowledging that “the other Mystery cults had myths that may or may not have referred to actual events in the archaic past… Literalist Christians claimed that their myth of the dying and resurrecting Godman had recently been realized in real life. This is Literalist Christianity's one claim to uniqueness, which is made by Augustine, the great spokesman of Christian Literalism… Augustine knew there was nothing exceptional about Roman Christianity but this one incredible idea: 'Christ came in the flesh.'”
   
David: And just for reference, Augustine of Hippo lived from 354 to 430 AD. An earlier literalist was Tertullian who lived from 155-230 AD, who wrote "On the Resurrection of the Flesh”. A quote from the book “The Gnostics: The First Christian Heretics” says that “Tertullian lambasted the Gnostics for their denial of the physical reality of Christ’s resurrection, declaring that anyone who did not believe that Jesus rose bodily from the grave was a heretic, and famously declared that the resurrection ‘must be believed, because it is absurd!’
   
Gene: Wow! That’s a peculiar argument.
   
13:19 Simon Magus
   
David: It is. Another quote from that book says that “Until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices, most of the information we had on the Gnostics was derived from the writings of the early Church Fathers, who regarded the Gnostics as heretics… Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon,  writing in the late second century, saw Simon Magus as the original Gnostic, the ‘Father of All Heresy’, and therefore as the emerging Church’s primary enemy.”
   
Gene: I thought that was really interesting. The story of Simon Magus in the New Testament paints him as someone who tries to buy his spirituality, hence the term “simony.” But Irenaeus said that Simon claimed to be a god, and that his partner Helen, who was a former prostitute, was the fallen Sophia, or “wisdom” and that he had redeemed her. He also said that Simon taught that the god of the Old Testament was not the highest god and, I guess most significantly to our discussion, that he taught a Gnostic philosophy of salvation through knowledge or gnosis.
   
David: All of those accusations are basically just literal interpretations of the main Gnostic myth of the fall of Sophia into the material realm, and how she is redeemed by the Sacred Marriage with the Logos.
   
Gene: And the myth of the Demiurge, being the “jealous god” of the Old Testament, which is a motif in many of the Gnostic myths.
   
David: Right. A part I found interesting was that Irenaeus said that Simon’s assertion to being god, which we’re taking to mean, the understanding of the inherent divinity in all of us, the Atman of Hinduism, or “Christ Consciousness”, basically, the Self awakened through Gnosis… that the assertion of having achieved this, was blasphemous, because it usurped Christ’s role as redeemer.
   
Gene: Which is seeing things backwards, because as we’ve discussed, when you mistake the symbol for what it symbolizes, that’s idolatry.
   
David: Yeah it’s strange when you really think about it. Augustine basically said - “Jesus was the myths made real.” And that’s the basis of the orthodox belief system. But, I understand that we are the myths made real.
   
Gene: We’ve said it over and over. All the people in the myths are you. So in that symbolic sense, you are Jesus. You have to carry your cross through life, suffer and die. That’s our shared humanity. That’s what links us all together  - that recognition of our shared plight. I mean, that’s one reading of the Jesus story.
   
15:49 Philo of Alexandria
   
David: That’s a very meaningful reading. We said earlier that much of what was known about Gnosticism, up to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, was from the early church fathers who considered the Gnostics heretics. But, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, who lived from the years 20 to 40 of the common era, were, for some reason, tolerated.
   
Gene: Yes, I thought that was strange, because Pike quoted from his works throughout the degrees. He’s the source, that most of the information about Gnosticism comes from in the Scottish Rite degrees, particularly the 17th Degree - Knight of the East and West.
   
David: Right. The 17th Degree of the Scottish Rite is basically dedicated to Gnosticism.
   
Gene: If you think about the symbolism of that degree - the war on the bridge that connects the East and the West - that’s a history of the world in miniature. Wars fought out of misunderstanding of the core doctrine that connects the philosophies of the East and the West.
   
David: That degree includes stories of both John the Baptist and John the Revelator, with the ritual including symbols from the Book of Revelation. So it basically ties the whole new testament together, with the two Saints John representing East and West.
   
Gene: And with Gnosticism presented as the bridge between the philosophies of the East, Judaism, and with the west, Greek philosophy.
   
David: Right. Philo was one of the philosophers who tried to do that. Of course, Paul, who is the primary author of the New Testament, was trying to do the same thing - to create an overarching narrative that synthesized the tales from the Torah and the Jewish Wisdom and Apocalyptic traditions, with Greek myths of the dying and rising god.
   
Gene: So, we’ve talked about how Gnostic ideas were brutally suppressed by the church. Why were Philo’s writings allowed to even exist?
   
David: That’s a good question. First off, Philo was Jewish, so his attempts to incorporate Greek ideas into Judaic thought weren’t quote-unquote “heretical” because he wasn’t Christian. It’s like they basically considered some of his thinking heretical in the context of Christianity, but Clement, Origen and others drew heavily upon his ideas, so it seems like he was sort of in a special category because of their respect for him.
   
Gene: And also, he lived before the time when the whole machine of repression really got rolling.
   
18:05  G.R.S. Mead
   
David: That’s true. But there were other Gnostic traditions, like Valentinus and Basilides, that escaped persecution, at least for a while.
   
Gene: So the main Gnostic traditions that we’re aware of are the Alexandrians, the Valentinians and the Basillideans?
   
David: Yes, that is my current understanding. And, we’ll discuss specifics about these traditions in later episodes. But, in the days when Pike was writing “Morals and Dogma”, in the 1860’s, Philo, Clement, Valentinus and Basilides were the primary sources he had available for understanding Gnosticism.
   
Gene: No Google!
   
David: No. Those were the main commentaries on Gnosticism available to Pike. But, in terms of original surviving Gnostic source texts, there were only three publicly available codices known to exist at that time - the Askew Codex, the Bruce Codex and the Berlin Codex, all of which were written in Coptic.
   
Gene: Which brings us to G.R.S. Mead, who translated some of those texts into English - starting with the Askew Codex. He published part of that codex as the “Pistis Sophia” and another part as “Extracts From the Books of the Savior”.
   
David: In Greek, “pistis” means “faith” or “belief”, and “sophia” means wisdom. The “Pistis Sophia”, describes one of the primary Gnostic myths of the fall of Sophia, divine wisdom, into the material realm. She remains in this fallen state until she is redeemed by the Christos, through her divine marriage with the Logos, that results in the birth of Gnosis.
   
Gene: And the text focuses on Mary Magdalene as symbolic of the fallen Sophia, which harkens back to the stories about Simon Magus and his consort, Helen.
   
David: Yes, because it refers to the same inner truth. But anyway, Mead published “Pistis Sophia” in 1896, “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten” in 1900, “Thrice-Greatest Hermes” in 1906, as well as books on Simon Magus and John the Baptist.
   
Gene: In essence, Mead, who was an esotericist and a member of the Theosophical Society, made these source texts accessible to the English-speaking world for the first time, and so, he reintroduced many Gnostic concepts back into the public consciousness.
   
David: And, as you might expect, there was backlash at the time. he was accused of promoting heretical ideas and misrepresenting Christian history. But, despite that criticism, his works were very influential. For example, psychologist Carl Jung, cited Mead’s work in his own writings on Gnosticism.
   
Gene: And Mead’s work also heavily influenced the broader esoteric and occult revival that was happening at the time. A prime example of this, is his influence on Aleister Crowley, who incorporated many Gnostic themes from Mead’s translations into his philosophy of Thelema.
   
David: And, in modern times, his influence has been acknowledged by Stephan A. Hoeller, author of “Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing”, the literary critic Harold Bloom, author of “The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation”, and Elaine Pagels, who published “The Gnostic Gospels” in 1989. I’ve linked to all of these texts in the Show Notes.
   
21:21 Nag Hammadi
   
Gene: So, have we finally worked our way back around to the Nag Hammadi discovery?
   
David: Yes we have. I just wanted to set the stage for how significant the discovery was, because there just wasn’t much actual source material available when they were found. Gene, would you describe the discovery of these texts in a bit more detail.
   
Gene: Sure. The texts were discovered in December of 1945 by two brothers, Muhammed and Khalifah 'Ali who were digging for fertilizer at the base of the Jabal al-Tarif cliff, in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, when they discovered a large sealed jar. Like I mentioned earlier, they were initially afraid to open it for fear of releasing a Djinn. But they got over their fear and broke the jar with a mattock. Inside the jar were 13 leather-bound papyrus codices, written in Coptic and dating from the 3rd and 4th centuries.
   
David: But, some of the texts had been translated into Coptic from earlier Greek texts… right?
   
Gene: Right. The texts contained selections from the Corpus Hermeticum and part of Plato’s Republic. The story of what happened next is pretty amazing. The texts were divided among seven people, one of them being the mother of the brothers, who burned some of the pages in her oven.
   
David: Oh wow, that’s tragic.   
   
Gene: Yeah. Anyway, they changed hands several times. Some were sold on the black market and some were confiscated.
   
David: So, how did they ever get collected and published?
   
Gene: In the 1970’s, a group of researchers, led by James Robinson, collected them and they were first published in a facsimile edition in 1972. And then, “The Nag Hammadi Scriptures” was published in 1979, which contained translations of the texts.
   
David: The significance of this discovery is that these texts provided a window into Gnostic Christianity, outside of the orthodox interpretation.
   
Gene: Exactly. And the library contained over 50 texts, some of which were previously unknown. The most famous of the texts is probably the Gospel of Thomas, because the Nag Hammadi codices contain the only complete text known to exist. But some of the other books are the Gospel of Philip, the Apocryphon of John, and the Apocalypse of Adam.
   
David: So, is it known who buried the texts?
   
Gene: No, but there is speculation that perhaps they were buried by monks from a nearby monastery after Saint Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in 367 AD.
   
David: In addition to calling the orthodox assertions that the Gnostics were some kind of “depraved cult”, the texts also presented a radically different view of the role of women, seeing them as equally capable of achieving Gnosis as men.
   
Gene: Yes, and perhaps even elevating their status a bit above men, or at least that’s probably how some of the texts were interpreted. I mean, the role of Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ most beloved disciple, and the only one of them who really understood Jesus’ message of inner awakening. And, some of that is strongly hinted at, even in the Bible as it has come down to us.
   
David: Which is why the two Marys are present at two of the three initiation sequences, the crucifixion and the resurrection.
   
Gene: Yes.
   
David: OK. Do you have anything else before we wrap up?
   
Gene: No, I that’s all I’ve got.
   
24:45  Conclusions
    
David: So, what are your final thoughts?
    
Gene: Oh man… so many thoughts! I feel like my head is about to explode.
    
David: I know. It’s a lot.
    
Gene: It is. The first thing is just that I wish I’d known some of this when I was going through the Scottish Rite, because it frames the degree material in a way that makes it understandable. I mean, Gnosticism is the key that unlocks the meaning of Masonry.
    
David: Right. Because Masonry is Gnosticism. Period. It’s just hard to see that because the rituals and lectures don’t ever say that explicitly.
    
Gene: Why do you think that is never said?
    
David: Well, it’s implied very strongly, but I think, especially at the time the degrees were created, you couldn’t say that out loud for fear of some sort of reprisal.
    
Gene: Do you think it’s any different today?
    
David: Yeah, it’s different. Um… let’s see what the reaction is to this episode.
    
Gene: True. What about you? What are your final thoughts?
    
David: There was a diagram in the book “Jesus and the Lost Goddess” that showed a circle with a point in the center and a line for the radius from the center to the circle. They related the three parts of the diagram, the circle, the radius line, and the center point to the three degrees of Gnosticism. At first, the initiate believes that they are the circle, which represents the physical world and the physical body. At some point, they realize that they are more than that and begin to see themselves as their mind or psyche, represented by the radius line. The third degree is to identify with the center point, which represents the core of consciousness. This is Gnosis, the knowledge of your True Self. And when you reach it, you realize that your center point is the center point of all circles.
    
Gene: God is a circle whose center is everywhere and it’s circumference nowhere.
    
David: Exactly. So, the circle with a point in the center represents the process of initiation into Gnosis. And if you put a line on either side of the circle, which in Masonry, are the two Saints John, then you have a perfect symbol for Christian Gnosticism, with John the Baptist representing the East, the link to Judaism and John the Revelator representing the West, Greek philosophy.
    
Gene: That’s really good.
    
David: And the three degrees of the Blue Lodge, and in the Scottish Rite, the three different Words, three names of God, and three temples, all correspond to the three degrees of Gnosticism.
    
Gene: Wouldn’t it have been great if someone had told you that before you went through the Scottish Rite?
    
David: Yeah, but I don’t know if I would have understood the significance of it back them. 
    
Gene: True. It is a process. Which makes me think of the book “God is a Verb” by Rabbi Berg. The main idea of the book is that awakening is a process, not a thing to be discovered. So, you are “God-ing” as you move along your path, constantly expanding your conception and awareness of divinity. In other words, It’s not something you read about, it’s something you do.
    
David: Right. It’s not a story to be believed, it’s a myth to be lived and realized in the here and now. 
    
Gene: So, to quote Monty Python, let’s get on with it!
    
David: Yes. So Gene, what are we doing next time?
    
Gene: In our next episode, we’ll continue our discussion of the Nag Hammadi texts.

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Dr. David Brown

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Gene Lawson

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