My Take on the Demiurge

I rarely make any theological assertions online. This is generally because up until recently my views and thoughts changed often as I adjusted my world view and ideas of reality. But I think I have reached a point where things are starting to come together in my mind so I thought I would speak a little bit about my ideas regarding the Demiurge, a popular Gnostic figure.

The impetus for doing this was partly a few posts I have seen recently in the Palm Tree Garden and a discussion I had a few days ago with a newly reborn Evangelical Christian. She was reading the Old Testament and I struck up a conversation with her about it. She was in the process of relegating the angry and jealous God of the OT with the loving and forgiving God of the NT. Obviously she was viewing both texts as literal history rather than teaching myths and was having some trouble with what was obviously a schizophrenic deity. She asked for my opinion on the matter to which I replied, "You're assuming that they are the same God."

Needless to say, the conversation ended shortly thereafter. Oh well.

Gnostics can and do associate the Demiurge with the Jewish God depicted in the OT mostly because some Gnostic scripture tells us to. The trap that many fall into however, particularly gnewbies, is that hard-to-get-over literal view of these stories. The 21st century western mind has been trained to dismiss myths as irrelevant stories for children and to view everything they read as literal fact that you either agree with or do not. To view the Demiurge as the Jewish God or the Creator and to view the Father found in the NHL and NT as a the true God above all is to fall into a dualistic view of the Universe. You find yourself with a Good God and a Bad God which is a difficult standpoint to live ones life with.

Many will do away with this dualist Good God/Bad God view and see the Demiurge as some sort of oppressive and somewhat inept administrator of this lowest Aeon with a team of lackeys in the form of the Archons. So now they have a sort of jail house theory to settle into, with the flesh being the jail and the Father being the means by which one escapes this prison and the Demiurge being a sort of warden set to keeping you here. But this has its problems too since it leads to an understandably us-against-them way of seeing our reality, which can create a kind of flesh-hating world-hating ideal, a belief system that Gnostics have been and are still often accused of. And this again is a hard point from which to extend a spiritual way of life.

The truth, or something much closer to the truth, IMO is that the Demiurge is not an alternative Big Guy or a warden, but in fact a representation of our own ego, the Archons our senses through which our ego receives all of its information.

Through our senses, perceptions and notions we ourselves create our reality, this physical world. It can be argued that all that we see and touch and feel and hear are not in fact external phenomena that exists outside of ourselves, but are in fact projections of our experience. Science has shown that solid objects are in fact not solid at all. Science also shows us that the molecules that objects are made of are also not solid, that the atoms again are not solid, that the electrons again are not solid, and so on. Physical reality in actuality is mind given form, nothing more and nothing less. It is our belief in the overriding notion of a physical material truth that traps us in the limitations and laws that govern this reality. It could be argued that if every being on this planet were to simultaneously BELIEVE that the sky is purple, then it would in fact be purple. In this way our own egos ARE the Creators of this reality. They ARE the Demiurge.

So what is the ego? The ego is that part of yourself that believes itself to be separate from the rest of the reality it perceives. It says, "I am me, so therefore I am." It is the part of ourselves that says that is mine, I want this, I will do that, I need this. But it is only one part of a trinity that makes up our nature. The second part is mind and the third is spirit. The ego is the observed, the mind is the observer and the spirit is the relay of information that occurs between the observed and the observer. Sort of like watching a movie in a theatre. My ego is a character acting out an experience on the screen, my Mind is the audience watching this experience occur, and my Spirit is the energy that conveys the emotions and sensations that are the result of this experience. The spirit is that which connects the divine to the material. Where we all get into trouble is we associate to closely with the character and become unable to distinguish the movie from reality. The movie BECOMES our reality.

So what are we truly? We are Mind. We are a fragment of the Divine that is observing a physical experience but are not of it. We are part of a universal "I" and not truly separate from God at all. The Demiurge represents our ego in the sense that we are ruled by the material and by our passions and our senses. He is jealous for if we are to awaken from these understandings and become aware again of our true nature as Mind, then He can no longer rule us and his power is diminished.

But here is another trap we can fall into. We do not want to dismiss and destroy the ego, for it is a necessary part to why we are here. The Demiurge is necessary, but He is not truly our ruler. To awaken to the truth of our inherent Divine reality, is to, in essence, step back into the role of audience, of observer. Life and Death as the Demiurge's creation understands it is a beginning and an end, but as Divine Mind they are merely transitions from one form to another. The Father is not an external figure, but an internal reality. A reality we can touch and exist with as were meant to once we subjugate the authority and influence of the Demiurge.

Easier said than done though ;)