by Neil Tessler
In Soami Ji's version, Kal first emerges as a worrisome presence after all the other "Surats" had been elaborated. Soami Ji tells us:
"There appeared a dark coloured current from the gate of the region of lotuses."
This current appeared like a dark coloured stone set in a white one and was absorbed in the Darshan of Sat Purush. All the Hansas enquired of the Purush as to what the emanation was that they could not comprehend. The Purush replied, "Do not worry. Go on enjoying the bliss and happiness. This emanation will create a different spectacle." Hansas were taken aback; they were unable to comprehend what this emanation was going to bring about. It was engaged in the service of Purush, but inwardly it cherished some other desire. That desire went on expanding. The emanation did not check it.
By the Will of Purush, the emanation ventured to submit thus:
" I wish to bring about a separate dominion of my own. This creation of Yours, I like not. I wish to create three worlds and rule over them, I will then however engage myself in Your dhyan (contemplation). The Purush turned out the Kala (the emanation). On being turned out, the Kala was in a great dread and alarm."8
The Kabiran version goes in a similar vein, wherein the Kala, here known as Dharam Rai, also nurtures a desire for a separate creation. However, greater emphasis is laid on his long and continued devotions to Sat Purush, to which Sat Purush responds by giving him the means to fulfill his desire.9
In the gnostic version of this myth quoted by Hippolytus, we find a very close reflection of Soami Ji and Kabir. However, we first meet that Aeon, whose nature sets the stage for all subsequent creation, as a female form:
"Rushing up to the depth of the Father, she perceives that whereas all the begotten Aeons generate by copulation, the Father alone generates out of himself (being in this version without consort); in this she wants to emulate him and also generate out of herself without spouse, so that she may not fall short of the Father's achievement. She failed to perceive that this is the power solely of the Unbegotten One, and so she managed only to bring forth a formless entity."10
This then is the first version, prominent in both East and Near East, where a desire for self-expression leads to separation and then to the lower creation. In all three, the motive for separation is, as noted by Jonas, pure hubris.
In the second gnostic version, the motivation is exactly the opposite; rather than a desire for separation, there is a longing for union. Structurally the tale is very similar in many respects. Here the longing of the Aeon, Sophia, to know the Absolute completely, is the primary force that sets in motion the process that eventually leads to the development of the lower creation. We will now dwell on this intense and evocative tale at greater length.
So it was that:
"The Aeons longed only secretly to behold the begetter of their seed and to search for the root without beginning."
This longing is "the beginning of a crisis in the Pleroma"...since the Aeons "cannot forgo the aspiration to know more than their limits permit and thus to abolish the distance separating them from the Absolute. The last and youngest (and therefore outermost of the Aeons), the Sophia, leapt farthest forward and fell into a passion apart from the embrace of her consort. That passion had originated and spread from the vicinity of the Mind and Truth but now infected the Sophia and broke out in her so that she went out of her mind, pretendedly from love, actually from folly or presumption, since she had no such community with the Father as the Only-Begotten Mind....The passion was a search for the Father, for she strove to comprehend his greatness. This, however, she failed to achieve, because what she attempted was impossible, and so she found herself in great agony; on account of the depth of the Abyss, into which in her desire she penetrated more and more, she would in the end have been swallowed up by its sweetness and dissolved in the general being, had she not come up against the power that consolidates the All and keeps it off the ineffable Greatness. This power is called Limit: by him she was consolidated, brought back to herself, and convinced that the Father is incomprehensible. Thus she abandoned her previous intention and the passion engendered by it. These, however, now subsist by themselves as a 'formless entity.'"
Sophia's return to harmony in the Pleroma is, as noted by Jonas,
"..the first restoration and ..salvation in the spiritual history of total being, and it occurs entirely inside the Pleroma, though as we shall see it is the cause of a chain of events outside it."
The image of what has taken place in the Pleroma itself, indicates that the Aeon's longing, which will 'later' lead to the lower creation, is eternally latent, eternally activated, and eternally reconciled. This certainly casts the mold for the triune attributes of creation described by Hinduism, that is, the triple Godhead and the three gunas. However, Kabir and Soami Ji assert that Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, satogun, rajogun, and tamogun come much later, far outside Sach Khand. In the meantime, 'the formless entity' created by Sophia's passion, as we shall see, becomes the basis of all subsequent creation outside Sach Khand.
Once the "integrity of the Pleroma" had been restored and Sophia rejoined to her consort, she contemplated on her fate and the 'formless entity' to which her passion has given birth. This gives rise to various emotions which also become embodied in the formless. The emotions evoked vary according to different Gnostic authors, but include grief, fear, bewilderment, shock, and repentance. A lesser Aeon is thus created out of the admixture of the Sophia's longing for union, as well as her emotions in the wake of her failure.
The residue of this disturbance in the Pleroma
"has become hypostatized as a positive realm by itself. Only at this price could the Pleroma be rid of it."
Thus the Limit ('which separates the Aeons from the unbegotten Father" above and the 'formless entity', soon to be below - NT.) was not planned in the original constitution of the Fullness, i.e., of the free and adequate self-expression of the godhead, but was necessitated by the crisis as a principle of consolidation and protective separation."
I mention the above, since both here and in the Eastern version we see emphasised the idea of creation as, on the one hand, wholly unrelated to the natural perfection of the Pleroma, yet paradoxically percolating from within it.
"As ignorance and formlessness had appeared within the Pleroma, deep perturbation remained among the Aeons, who no longer felt safe, fearing like happenings to themselves."
A collective prayer to the Father invokes a new pair of Aeons whose purpose is to restore true serenity to the Pleroma and take care of the residual formlessness. These are Christos and Holy Spirit. The Christos imparts to the Aeons knowledge of their relationship to the Father which leads them to perfect repose.
"As a fruit of their new unity, they all together, each contributing the best of his essence, produce an additional (and unpaired) Aeon, Jesus, in whom the Fullness is, as it were, gathered together and the regained unity of the Aeons symbolized. This 'perfect fruit of the Pleroma,' who contains all its elements, has later, as Savior, to carry in his person the Fullness out into the Void, in which the residue of the past disturbance, meanwhile "formed" by Christos, still awaits salvation."
Here we find a reflection at the level of the Pleroma of the maintaining function (Christos) distinguished from the salvational function (Jesus), as with the distinction in Sant Mat between the role of an Avatar versus that of a Sant. In the theology of Sant Mat an Avatar is a Divine incarnation of the Negative Power whose purpose is to stabilize and maintain creation, whereas the Sant Sat Guru, as the incarnation of the Sat Purush, carrying "the Fullness out into the void", brings deliverance to the souls enmeshed in creation. "The incarnations of the Positive Power, the Saints, look after the souls and take them back to God."11
The new Aeon, the Desire of the Sophia, is now separated as an entity unto itself, is called the Achamoth or the lower Sophia. Together with the Passions she is cast "outside" the Pleroma. Energized by the Christos reaching out from the Pleroma, she is left "with the awakened awareness of her separation from the Pleroma and the aroused longing for it. This initiates a redemptional task whose accomplishment requires a long detour of suffering and successive divine interventions." In other words lower creation now becomes an inevitable development, yet paradoxically essential for the higher purpose of reconciliation.
"The deserted Sophia impetuously sets out to seek after the vanished light, but cannot reach it, for the Limit obstructs her forward rush. She cannot penetrate through him, because of her admixture of the original Passion, and forced to remain alone in the outer darkness she falls prey to every kind of suffering that exists. In this she repeats on her own level the scale of emotions which her mother in the Pleroma underwent, the only difference being that these passions now pass over into the form of definitive states of being, and as such they can become the substance of the world....grief, because she could not get hold of the light; fear, lest besides the light also life might leave her; bewilderment, added to these; and all of them united in the basic quality of ignorance (itself counted as an 'affection'). And still another state of mind ensued: the turning (conversion) toward the Giver of Life."
This then is the foundation of creation, the endless admixture of the four "negative" emotions pervaded by the positive element of longing for the Source. The four represent the Negative Power in it's definitive form as a force going into expression or manifestation. The turning on the other hand is the salvational aspect, leading back toward the True God. It is the source of all prayer and spiritual effort within creation. This is also known in Sant Mat as 'bireh', the intense anguish of separation, which has given the world so much exquisite spiritual literature.
In the next act, the Achamoth is herself "detached" from the passions she has generated, by the intervention from the Pleroma of "the common fruit", i.e., Jesus. Through "Jesus" she is drawn into a higher consciousness and thus a greater awareness of her position.
Oddly enough, now we find the lower Sophia building on the energy of 'turning back' to generate a son, the Demiurge, through whom further creation proceeds. Does it not at first seem strange that at this stage the force of longing gives even greater impulse to the movement away from the Pleroma? Here we have another hint that somehow the generation of the lower worlds is connected to the desire to return to the Source.
We will come back to this point, but in the meantime much is made of the essential ignorance of the Demiurge, which leads him to declare himself to be the "unique and highest God". "Ialdabaoth was boastful and arrogant, and exclaimed: "I am Father and God, and beyond me is none other."12 However, the processes he sets in motion, believing them to be his own, are in fact, fashioned by his mother. In this it is again suggested that no matter how 'fallen' creation ultimately becomes, the entire process is an expression of Divine Will.
The polarity between an ignorant creator God, well removed from even his mother, and a far distant Eternity of Consciousness, i.e., the True God, is at the center of Gnostic and Sant Mat theology. Soami Ji repeatedly asserts, as did the Gnostics, that the God of the various world religions is none other then Kal or the Demiurge at best; more likely one of his provincial expansions. Therefore, his worship is false and leads to ever greater enmeshment rather than true liberation.
"I do not abide in the three worlds. Only a drop of my ocean-like form is here. All the religions prevalent in the world speak and talk of this drop as (if it were) the ocean."13
The Achamoth, the lower Sophia, leads the Demiurge into the knowledge of what is above him;
"however, he keeps to himself the great mystery of the Father and the Aeons into which the Sophia has initiated him and divulges it to none of his prophets."
Imparting knowledge of the Father to the lower creation itself is left to
"the incarnation of the Aeons Jesus and Christos from the Pleroma in the person of the historical Jesus."
This, at least, is an interpretation of the Valentinian perspective, that being the Christian gnostic school from which this story is derived. However, the extension of this concept in other gnostic circles and so essential to Sant Mat, is that the incarnation in the world of "the common fruit" of the Pleroma, to bring salvation to the Demiurgical creation, is a perpetual manifestation, somehow essential to the structure of the world. This is none other then the Living Master, the Grace bearing manifestation of Sat Purush amidst the human family.
Though we have skipped various steps and details for which the reader is invited to review Hans Jonas's writings or the original works such as the Gospel of Truth as found in the Nag Hammadi collection, we are ready to proceed to the position of humanity in this total process.
Unwittingly, the Demiurge, also known as Ialdabaoth, is led to the creation of godlike, yet innocent primal humanity, but leaves them in ignorance of their true origin and potential. His mother, The lower Sophia, however, working through the snake of wisdom, imparts Adam with gnosis, the spiritual knowledge of his true station. Seeing this awakened state, the jealous and angry Demiurge casts humankind farther into matter, where human nature recapitulates the passions and longing of its high progenitors. This, of course, is the tale of Adam and Eve turned on its head. The first children are banished, not by God, but their apparent creator, who is, in fact, an impostor. Despite the jealous machinations of the Demiurge it is the destiny of humanity to be the receptacle of the highest mysteries.
"...Listen to me, the Sound of the Mother of your mercy, for you have become worthy of the mystery hidden from the Aeons.." (Trimorphic Protennoia Nag Hammadi Library p.467)
"Behold, Zostrianos, you have heard all these things of which the gods are ignorant.." (Zostrianos Nag Hammadi Library p.392)
According to the gnostics, the hope for salvation from the bondage of Time proceeds from the original Passion of the primal Sophia, which necessitated creation in the first place. Furthermore:
"Since Oblivion (the lower world) came into existence because they (the Aeons) did not know the Father, therefore if they attain to a knowledge of the Father, Oblivion becomes at that very instant non-existent" (Gospel of Truth 18. 7-14).
"Thus the world, unbeknown to its immediate author, is for the sake of salvation, not salvation for the sake of what happened within creation and to creation."
In other words, in gnostic theology there is no primordial act, such as Eve's so-called sin, for which all of humanity collectively partakes in guilt and for which salvation exists as a path to restoration. Indeed, true Gnosis is not alone the reconciliation of God and creation, but in the poignant metaphor of the gnostics, the vicarious fulfillment of the longing of the eternal Aeon Sophia to know the Absolute. In this noble vision, creation is a bridge extending from the the high and eternal attributive realms to the dense regions of matter, yet, like a mobius strip, circling back into the dimension that is unmanifest and beyond all attributes. Again, according to the teachers of Sant Mat, within the totality of manifest being, humanity alone has the potential for perfect spiritual awakening encompassing both existence and non-existence.
Through this story we can come to understand another small piece of the mystery of the Satguru in Sant Mat. Before he is Satguru, he is a gurumukh, a complete disciple. He is immersed in the blissful darshan of the Satguru on all planes including the physical. When he becomes Satguru, he loses this absolute of gifts, and he is now gazing through the eyes he formerly looked into:
"In Your Absence, where is the once blooming and ecstatic state of my heart? I'm afraid lest the secret of our love may be disclosed now. Otherwise, who knew this hidden tale besides You." - Translation of a portion a poem by Kirpal Singh on the passing of Baba Sawan Singh.14
To this irreparable loss, as with Sophia, he responds with an unbroken longing, a longing that cannot be fulfilled, except vicariously through his own gurumukh. Baba Sawan Singh once said,
"If my Satguru would come and give me Darshan even for a minute, I would gladly give away everything I have." 15
The Satguru embodies the eternal nature of longing, the cause of creation itself, just as he also manifests the eternity of love and union with the Beloved that is the fulfillment of all longing.
Sophia's Passion: Sant Mat and the Gnostic Myth of Creation, by Neil Tessler
Return to Home Page Index
Part One: Part Two: Footnotes: