The

concrete world, far from being illusionary, is quite

immediate,
relevant and approached by the capacities which exist

within the soul.
The soul cannot afford to be passive because the

world is participatory
in its essence and emerges out from it;

darkness repress and separates it
from its light, conforming it

into its own – this darkness, while emerging
out of forgetfulness

is nevertheless part of the evil which is real.

The world, material

conditions, the lower soul, the counterfeit spirit
and evil –

while we may find ourselves to exist in a twilight between them and
the Pleroma – has such claim upon us that

it is nonsense to speak of any kind of illusion.

An illusion is some phenomenon which briefly, or in a period of extension, appears

to be real, to be “solid” – in terms of the language applied by our positivistic empiricism inherited from the thinkers of the age of enlightenment and their successors in philosophy – but which, and this is important, reveal themselves to be unreal, to be a fabrication forged by the senses, by faulty interpretation of such, or as a cluster of beliefs which in a brief period of disorientation manifests itself as immediate, solid and verified by perception. “Illusion” as a figure of speech isn’t even a valid argument for or against any phenomenon, deattached from perception and the interpretation of perception.
It is impossible for you to sit down in your chair, turn your computer on, log onto the internet and open this blog, and read these words – without this sequence of events, and your interaction with certain apparatus – apart from the world of matter.

This is observed also by the Gospel of Phillip, which argues that the resurrection will occur to a body, and this body is also matter :

But tell me what will rise, that we may honor you. You

say the Spirit in the flesh, and it is also this light in the flesh. (But) this too is a

matter which is in the flesh, for whatever you shall say, you say nothing outside the

flesh.

So this flesh goes to destruction with all things that go to destruction – what rises out of the earth, given time, will return to it. In the meantime, as I addressed earlier, the Soul embodied continues to be sacrifice on the part of all incarnate life. There will be comprehension, there will be understanding,there will be wisdom, there will be knowledge – and there will be Gnosis – in the body, in the flesh, with you now, that you are living –
but the body goes to back to its own, leaving behind comprehension, leaving behind consciousness, leaving behind the mystery of breath. So it is true, the concrete, physical
world, with all its matter, with all its limitations, with all suffering – all unions and all separations – will not last, it is not eternal. But it is not an illusion, in any capacity.

About the proper attitude towards matter, the Gospel of Philip says “Do not love it,

and do not fear it” – either way it detains you and substract

from you what is
needed elsewhere, by way of emotion and

disposition. This dispassion with
regards to it is made possible

by not being centered within a conscious
center within us whose

balance is towards “flesh” and “appearance”(untruth),

it might be pertinent to speak of it as the body insofar as the

manifest body is a form with which we are accustomed to. If we are

too disposed towards the physiology and anatomy of ourselves

and others, to the degree it overshadows all else, we grow morbid

-while we
loose ourselves in these things – sensually,

intellectually, creatively –
notion does not escape us that this

appreciation itself does not repair
its condition, which is

dwindling.

The Gospel of Thomas has Jesus diagnose the “rude

awakening” of one which formerly thought to know and possess

the body; “when you have found the body, you have discovered

a corpse”.
I do not mean with this that the Gnostic

dualism has to do with body vs.
spirit, for there is a

tripartition of man`s priority or
consciousness-of-self within

most Gnoses within the Gnostic tradition, and
the three can never

achieve status as dual or duality – also a tripartite
nature of the human being – his creation or coming into this particular form
you

and I have – speaking of all qualities within the former three;

has
also three stadiums and natures – the dualism of Gnosticism is

Spiritual:
There is Pleroma and Kenoma; Fullness and Emptiness,

there is Light and
Dark which are directly relating to the

acquisition of Gnosis – moreover,
and this anchors the Initiatory,

progressive, calculated approach of the
Gnostic Systems; wherein

the Myth of Descent and Ascent, Fall and
Redemption, Forgetting

and Remembering, Exile and Return plays a
significant part –

namely the divide which exist between Spirit and
Counterfeit

Spirit.

In the progression of the Gnostic Myth, Sophia produces an unequated reflection upon herself apart

from the wholeness – while man is disposed to do so from

the
beginning of his life on earth, enforced and encouraged by

wellmeaning
mediators and tutors, by parental upbringing to

education and religious
instruction – this also occurs in his

soul. As such, he receives that
which is excreted out of Sophia, a

particular portion of the Demiurge
containing his essence, and

becomes its container, for most, for the
duration of his life..

whereupon the lion briefly roars and instills fear
in the souls of

this aeon, only to again be brought down into this abyss
of

purificatory preparations of Man interior.

In

one liturgy we are informed Sophia bears twins, this becomes a

subject
for both the Zervanite story of the younger and elder son,

wherein the
younger coming to realization that his destination is

subservience, breaks
through the womb before his brother and waits

there to strangle him at his
arrival – and the medieval Cathar

story of the sons Jesus and Satanael,
born to the unknown Dyadic

“Father”.

The

Myth speaks to no-one else but the soul, that means, not the soul

in
general, but yours and mine. If we are fulfilled in a greatly

focused and
discerning consciousness coupled with all-embracing

compassion for all
life, and particular that of our fellows who

suffers the same from the day
they enter into the world, we may,

through this really extraordinary,
almost unique ,.disposition,

make do without it or similar reminders. But
the world is full of

effective and ineffective, true and counterfeit
“myths”

addressing souls in this capacity, and Tradition more often than
not

are anchored with it, but often, so deep no “traditionalist”

is aware
of it and cultures are bereaved of its benefits.

Christ

is called, in some Christian traditions, “Second Creation” or even

“Second
Nature” – it is Christ, in the selfsame, who

collects and brings
together – the “Christian” himself/herself becomes

the embodiment of this Second Creation and receives it; in one

capacity as Adam, meaning the virgin “earth” which
receives

it (whose symbol the Cross and essence the Ashes, are drawn upon
many

brows on this day without any realization of this) –

another
capacity, active, as Sophia, who in iconography is the

“pregnant Madonna”
bearing within her the complete

Christ (here pious Christian Ikons
actually depict a Docetic

Christ who arrives completely formed and
transfigured out of Mary,

but in a manner of revelation rather than
fleshly form) encircled

by a Vesica Piscis, a Mandorla, a “womb of light”.

While

Catholics, ironically the most bitter polemists against

Gnosticism,
Modern and Ancient, today – thinks that the Gnostics

lived in fear of the
flesh and matter, thinking it to be the

essence of evil contradistinct to
an entirely divorced reality of

spirit; they still look toward the
Nativity on December the 25th

as an answer to the fall of man into a
predicament which equals

the fragility, vulnerability and nakedness of all
flesh, and

simultaneously offers thought to the “forebears” earthly

Adam and
earthly Eve, and essentially all mortal men and women

proceeding from them
by the generations -and their fall into this

condition which is what has
been diagnosized as the same by their

“rivals and enemies” the Gnostics;
they still apply

words pointing hope in the direction of a reintegration
into the

Kingdom of God, following the ascent of Christ, in Christ and
through

Christ, as well as a contemplation on the tomb of a man who was
born

in the sight of other mortals, “laying with him in his tomb,

entering
our death through his”. All that is lacking is an

appreciation that the
finitude of “creation” is a

beguiling lie, and the architects of the
notions have for all too

long forget the reasoning behind their craft – to
glorify the

temporal as eternal. I.e. Idolatry.

If

we possess a notion of Idolatry – the notion of a

representation,
wrought by human hands, receiving the glory and

worship True divinity,
True deity deserves; we acknowledge the

Duality of types, and the
possibility of having a relationship

towards true, revealed Reality
contra distinct to the false and

contrived appearance of Reality.

There is no both and same in

Gnosticism; at best we may be reminded of
existing things by

inspecting what is “before our eyes”, as the Gospel

of
Thomas reminds us ; if we “cleave the wood, lift the

stone” – we will see
what is hidden within_and hidden

beneath; but this requires a certain
type of seeing, which only

one certain type of eye might see.
This requires something else

than passive certainity.

Before

anything can be received into me, I must make sure I am the
space

which receives it; it demands an emptying, and a complete
disrobing. In the same way, the verified authenticity of any world,
any being, any thing – depends on there first being a verified authentic
self. If there is any doubt, we must go where it leads, and open up
that about which there is any doubt. In the case of our self, we need
to be able to empty ourselves completely of everything preconceived,
everything that has accumulated without consent, without knowledge –
of that which we know is whole.