Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the Summer 2011 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation:  "From the Editor's Desk." Quest  99. 3 (Summer 2011): 82.

It's time for some straight talk about the Masters.

     Koot Hoomi, Morya, Hilarion, the Comte de St. Germain'the hidden Masters who, we are told, inspired and nurtured the fledgling Theosophical movement'are shadowy figures, as they no doubt meant to be. Human nature being what it is, speculation, imagination, and sheer fancy have been pulled in to fill in the gap of knowledge, with results ranging from the improbable to the comical. As Pablo Sender points out in his article in this issue, the Theosophical Masters are frequently confounded with the Ascended Masters of several New Age movements, although the Theosophical Masters never claimed to have "ascended" and indeed insisted that they were human beings in fleshly incarnation.

     How much of the early accounts of the Masters is truth, how much is speculation, and how much is sheer flapdoodle? I am sure that there are nearly as many opinions on this score as there are Theosophists, and since I did not witness those events, I can only respond to them with that old esoteric maxim "Neither accept nor reject."

     And yet some things can be said. In the first place, it seems misguided to dismiss the notion of the Masters as mere fiction. There are too many such figures on the fringes of history'forest-dwelling yogis, Sufi shaikhs, and individuals like the unnamed "Friend of God in the Highlands," a fourteenth-century German sage who provided guidance to the German mystic Johannes Tauler. There are also the Rosicrucian brothers, the maggids or inner-plane teachers of the Kabbalah, and the Immortals'the Taoist sages who are said to dwell undetected in the mountains of China. They all point to one conclusion: that the potential for human development is much greater than we usually believe and that some rare individuals over the centuries have realized this potential.

These stories, like those surrounding the Masters in the early days of Theosophy, are fascinating'too fascinating, perhaps. They have encouraged many to gauge their own expectations in the light of these accounts. But such expectations are unrealistic.

     To put the matter bluntly, if you are expecting a turbaned Master to materialize in your living room some evening, you are going to be disappointed. Whatever the early Theosophists did or did not experience, their contacts were of a unique time and place and are highly unlikely to be replicated for us 125 years later. It is probably safe to say that any meeting you may have with a genuine Master is not going to be what you expected.

     Why? At least two reasons suggest themselves. To begin with, a Master may be defined as someone who represents a level of knowledge higher than that of the student. If the Master is indeed embodying this higher level, he or she is not going to bear much resemblance to your preconceptions. After all, your expectations are based on lower-level concepts.

     Furthermore, development on the spiritual path requires one to penetrate the surfaces of ordinary reality and see beyond what is apparent. For those who fail to learn this elementary lesson, there are any number of posers with elaborate names and titles, pretentious costumes, and extravagant claims that will be more than happy to satisfy their expectations, usually for a handsome price.

     I remember one story of an individual I knew who was, if not a Master, certainly closer to one than anyone else I have ever known. He had taught his students a movement practice, and the students gave a performance of it one day. Two people who witnessed the show were leaders of another esoteric school, one reputed'and apparently with good reason'for being able to make things "go bump in the night." They ran up to the teacher and asked who was responsible for the performance. To which the man replied with a drawl, "I'm not really in charge...You have to go and find so-and-so"'indicating a pupil who was managing the event for the evening. And off the two went.

     Was the man playing games with them? As alleged adepts in their own right, should they have been able to see through his little subterfuge? Possibly. At the very least, the story teaches what most seekers either know or soon learn'that the trail to knowledge is not only hidden but deliberately hidden. This is not to create difficulties for their own sake; rather, it is to teach us to see past appearances. If we can't accomplish this, we are unlikely to go very far.

     Another story: some Kabbalistic traditions speak of the Messiah not as an individual who will come at the end of time, but as the spiritual head of humanity at any given point'an equivalent of the Sufi concept of the qutb or "Pole of the Age." According to this story, a man went to an esoteric school to meet a great Master and was kept waiting in the courtyard. In a corner of the courtyard he saw a man sweeping. The visitor recognized the sweeper as the Messiah. And the sweeper, seeing this, put his finger to his lips and said, "Shh."

     The punch line to this story: if you meet a Master, maybe the best thing to do is keep your mouth shut.

Richard Smoley

Originally printed in the Fall 2011 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Richard Smoley. "The Dalai Lama Comes to Chicago." Quest  99. 3 (Summer 2011): 126.

By Richard Smoley

The Theosophical Society presented its largest event in decades on July 17-18, 2011, when it hosted three appearances in Chicago by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet. The theme was "Bridging the Faith Divide: Compassion in Action," emphasizing a major concern both for the Dalai Lama and for the TS leadership in recent years.

     At the first day's event, which took place at the University of Illinois in Chicago, the Dalai Lama addressed a crowd of over 8000. He was introduced by TS president Tim Boyd, who called him "one of the greatest people on the world stage today." Boyd noted that the Dalai Lama's first contact with the Society came during a visit to the Society's headquarters in Adyar, India, in 1956, during a trip that was only his second out of Tibet. The Dalai Lama confirmed this, saying that he was impressed by the atmosphere of the Adyar headquarters, which he said was both "spiritual" and "respectful of all religions."

     The Dalai Lama also congratulated the state of Illinois for its recent abolition of the death penalty and presented a traditional white blessing scarf to state Governor Pat Quinn, who was on hand for the event. "I think most religions [that] believe in God make a distinction between sin and sinner," the Dalai Lama said. "God condemns sin, but not a sinner. [For a] sinner, there must be forgiveness." Blessing scarves were also presented to Boyd and to former TS president Betty Bland.

     While the Dalai Lama's speech was sometimes hard to follow—he joked at one point about his broken English—his message was clear and compelling. For the last 3000-4000 years, he observed, the goal of religion has been "to help humanity, to bring inner peace. The use of religion for money, power, fame [is] not [the] proper use of religion." But it was these uses, he said, that are the leading causes of religious conflict in the world today. "Conflicts [are] not for the sake of religious faith, but for power."

     The Dalai Lama observed that there are some crucial differences among the world's religions, notably between the theistic faiths, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, on the one hand, and the "nontheistic" faiths on the other, which, he said, included not only Buddhism but Jainism and the Samkhya school of Hinduism. "One [group of religions] has a creator, one does not," he pointed out. "To carry [the] message to followers, theistic religions use the idea of God. [The] real meaning of God," he said, is "infinite love and compassion." The nontheistic religions, by contrast, say that the universe arose out of "causes and conditions."

     Despite these differences, all religious traditions have the same goal, he went on to say. "Spirituality is like medicine for illness. Although there is a "variety of medicines for different illnesses, [medicine as a whole] has the same purpose—to bring better health to humanity." Religion can be seen as a medicine for the mind, he added.

     Nevertheless, the Dalai Lama also stressed that "there are honest, truthful people who are not religious. [For] basic human moral principles, religion [is] not necessary." This represented a key point in his discourse. The basis for universal understanding will never come through some kind of grand unification of religions, he contended, but rather by emphasizing the basic moral values that everyone, believer and nonbeliever alike, shares. The "number one commitment," he said, should be to promote "warm-heartedness" among all peoples.

     The Dalai Lama also emphasized the need for separation of religion from the state. "No one can force religious belief," he said. He held up India over the last thousand years as a model of tolerance and respect for all religions. On several occasions during the two-day event, he praised India and its heritage, noting that Buddhism was introduced to Tibet from India in the eighth century ad. "Every particle of my brain is filled with Indian thought," he observed at one point, adding, "For the last fifty years, my body [has been] sustained by Indian rice and dal," a lentil stew that is a staple of Indian cuisine.

     The Dalai Lama went on to warn against changing religious traditions. One reason for Buddhism's popularity in the West, he contended, was that "modern people love something new. For a few months, [they] show interest, then forget. Better to keep your own traditions—it is much safer. Otherwise [there is a] danger of confusion."

     The Dalai Lama concluded Sunday's gathering with several suggestions for promoting religious harmony. In the first place, he suggested meetings among scholars of different faiths to discuss their differences and similarities. Second, he said, it would be useful to have meetings of practitioners of each faith "who have some deeper experience." (He recounted a meeting of his own with a Catholic monk in Spain who had lived for five years as a hermit." The monk's summary of his experience was, according to the Dalai Lama, "meditate on love.") Third, he encouraged "group pilgrimages to different holy places of different religions," a practice he has engaged in since 1975. Finally, he said that conversations among religious leaders themselves were necessary.

     At the Monday event, which took place at Chicago's Harris Theater, the Dalai Lama conversed with religious leaders of the three Abrahamic faiths, in a panel moderated by Eboo Patel, a Muslim and founder of Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that brings together young people of different religious and moral traditions for cooperative service and dialogue. Other panelists were the Rev. Canon Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches of Christ–USA; Rabbi Michael Lerner, a spiritual progressive and founder of Tikkun magazine; and Ingrid Mattson, former president of the Islamic Society of North America. (An interview with Mattson can be found on page TK of this issue.)

The Dalai Lama's comments on Monday were largely restatements of points he had made the previous day, although he also spoke out against blanket condemnation of any religious faith. "Some people generalize Islam as a militant religion," which, he said, was "unfair," calling it "totally mischievous" to stigmatize whole traditions. Actually, he said, there are a "few mischievous people" among all faiths.

     Among the panelists, Ingrid Mattson stressed that "personal encounter" was the key to success in interfaith activity, a point that was echoed by both of the other panelists. Chamberlain cited an instance of an interfaith service at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Paul in Minneapolis on behalf of victims of the 2008 Minneapolis bridge collapse, while Lerner pointed out that it was exchanges between the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel and Pope John XXIII that led to the elimination of anti-Jewish references in the Catholic liturgy after Vatican II.

     Lerner's were among the more interesting comments by panelists. He said that according to Judaism "a central part of our task is to embody God's being in our own reality....God-energy transforms the world from the way the world is to the way it ought to be." What ordinarily counts as "realism"—dismissing ideals and higher values as impractical—is, from a Jewish point of view, "idolatry," since the familiar reality of the world as we know it is not God, and it is wrong to put this reality above God. "Don't be realistic!" Lerner urged.

     In his address, the Dalai Lama said that it was "wrong to expect that everyone is going to be good. Even nonbelievers are part of humanity. Everyone wants to be happy. No one wants to be violent. Everyone wants peace, [a] happy life [in a] happy world." He added that "no one wants trouble"; people only act in violent ways "out of ignorance." He genially differed with Lerner's comments about realism, saying that "realistic action" was necessary. "You have to know [the] situation; wider investigation [is] necessary. You must be objective and realistic in order to develop."

     On Monday afternoon, there was a special event for members of the Theosophical Society, which chiefly consisted of a question-and-answer session. At one point the Dalai Lama asked Boyd, "Do you have publications?", to which Boyd replied, "Yes, Your Holiness, as a matter of fact, we published you," referring to the Dalai Lama's book The Opening of the Wisdom-Eye, published by Quest Books in 1966 and still in print. The Dalai Lama praised the TS highly, citing the organization's open-minded approach to the study of religion, science, and philosophy. In response to a question, he described his flight from Lhasa, Tibet's capital, on March 17, 1959 to escape invading Chinese troops, giving a powerful first-hand account of a major historical event by one of its chief participants.

     Despite some complaints by conference attendees about the sound quality, particularly of the Sunday event, the conference went smoothly and marked a major triumph for the Theosophical Society. The event had been organized in short notice; the date for it had only been set in February 2011. "From the beginning the event was planned in a way that would put the minimum stress on the TSA staff," Tim Boyd points out, adding, 'Of course 'minimum' is a very relative term. Every department and every staff member had some role in making the occasion a success. The sometimes hectic requirements of the event were met with poise and grace. One of our visiting members put it well when she said, 'I want to thank every staff member for the loving and patient way they served' during the conference. It was a good time to be a Theosophist."

Originally printed in the Fall 2011 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Editor's Desk." Quest 99.4 (FALL 2011):122

When you think about it, "initiate" is a peculiar word. In some occult literature, like the Initiate trilogy written in the 1920s and '30s by the Theosophist Cyril Scott, it denotes someone extremely advanced. And yet "initiate" means "beginner," someone who has just started something.

We might find a clue to this apparent contradiction in Buddhism, which speaks of the novice as a srotapanna, or "one who enters the stream." The image points to a key aspect of initiation: the fact that it opens one up to a stream of spiritual influence offered by a tradition.

What does initiation entail? To speak from my own reflection and experience, there are three basic levels. They may be conferred in formal rituals—of an organization known or unknown—although I suspect that at least in some cases no ritual, or only the most basic type of ritual, is involved.

The first could simply be called the initiation of responsibility. It marks a point at which the individual stands forward and freely agrees to accept the task of his or her own personal evolution—in Buddhist terms, entering the stream. Most people, however wise, educated, or successful, have not made any such commitment. They will develop and grow as the random circumstances of life permit. But the initiate at the first level makes this commitment to work upon self-development. In return he or she is (metaphorically) implanted with a kind of seed crystal that forms the core of the awakening self. Life starts to shape itself around this crystal and serves as a means of purging the initiate of the dross of his character.

This process of purification continues for a long time, years or more likely decades, and probably there are few initiates alive on earth who are not continuing to undergo it. But after the individual has reached some level of maturity, the time comes for a second initiation—the stage when he now takes on the additional responsibility of a task or line of work that he is uniquely able to pursue, such as healing, art, or social action. This is not necessarily a trade or profession in the ordinary sense, although it may well jibe with one's work in daily life. One could call this the initiation of vocation.

Having started on this line of work, the initiate then pursues it both for self-development and in service to a higher purpose. Inevitably the individual will make mistakes, will do some things well and others badly, and will suffer from lapses of judgment or even ethics. But they are part of the process of learning. If the initiate is made of good material (and the very fact of initiation suggests that he is), he will sort through his mistakes and learn the necessary lessons from them.

The third is the stage of mastery. This is not a matter of acquiring amazing mystical powers or superhuman capacities. But it does show that the individual has acted upon the responsibility he took on in the first initiation and developed the skills required in the second. He is not necessarily finished with these tasks, but he has acquired enough ability to work creatively and from his own initiative. He is now enabled to stake out new ground and expand humanity's range of knowledge.

While I am not a Freemason, these stages seem to correspond to the three levels of Blue Lodge Masonry: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason. Some of those who have been raised to these levels (as Masons would put it) may be able to see the correspondences and could even explain some of the mysteries of these stages from details of the Masonic rites.

Theosophical literature (for example, The Secret Doctrine 1:206 and The Mahatma Letters, chronological edition, 189), speaks of seven stages of initiation, and you could spend a good deal of energy trying to figure out whether the additional four levels are superadded to these three or simply represent a finer subdivision of the same stages. (Another Theosophical scheme, discussed by Raul Branco in this issue, speaks of five initiations.) In any case, I myself suspect that there are many further levels that are not accessible or even comprehensible to someone living on earth. As Theosophy teaches, the process of evolution is virtually infinite, always with further to go and higher beings to learn from. Initiates, then, are well-named: however advanced they may be, they are still in a sense beginners.

Is self-initiation possible? The answer appears to be no. If you are entering a spiritual stream, it is a stream that already exists and there must be someone to introduce you to it. While many people have had spontaneous experiences of illumination, these are probably better described as moments of awakening or enlightenment than as initiation per se. And while some say they have received initiations on the inner planes, such cases seem highly prone to self-delusion, not to mention fraud. Even so, only a fool, I think, would state categorically that inner-plane initiation is impossible.

Finally, is initiation necessary for spiritual advancement? Again the answer seems to be no. The range of human experience is too vast, too well endowed with spontaneous awakenings and self-discovered insights, to suggest that formal initiation is always required for progress on the path. For some, it is not only valuable but necessary. Others do perfectly well without it. Why? The answer to this mystery no doubt lies in the uniqueness of the human individuality and the wide scope of circumstances that are needed to help it flourish.

—Richard Smoley

Originally printed in the Fall 2011 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Branco, Raul. "The Pistis Sophia: An Introduction." Quest 99.4 (FALL 2011):144-151

by Raul Branco

In recent years some authors have attempted to interpret the text, such as Jan van Rijckenborgh, with his book Les mystères gnostiques de la Pistis Sophia; J.J. Hurtak and his wife Desiree Hurtak; and Samael Aun Weor, a self-proclaimed Gnostic master and supposed member of the Great White Fraternity, who wrote Pistis Sophia develada ("Pistis Sophia Unveiled"), explaining all of the text's mysteries in terms of sexual magic.

In Brazil in 1997, the author of this article published a version of the Pistis Sophia with suggested interpretations of the text and a summary of the cosmology of the work, with the help of some little-known notes of Blavatsky (Blavatsky, "Pistis Sophia"). This article attempts to describe the text in terms of the expansion of consciousness attained by Jesus as part of his supreme initiation.

The Manuscript

The original text of the Pistis Sophia, written in Greek, has been lost; the earliest version we have is an ancient translation into Coptic. The codex containing it was brought to England around 1772 and was later sold to the British Museum. The complete text was translated into Latin in the mid-nineteenth century by M. G. Schwartze, but it was only half a century later that it was translated into modern European languages, such as French (Amalineau, 1895), German (Carl Schmidt, 1905) and English (G. R. S. Mead, 1921). A much more recent translation was made by Violet MacDermot and published in 1978.

The text is divided into three major parts. In the first, Jesus is with his disciples for eleven symbolic years (perhaps eleven months) after his return from the dead, at the Mount of Olives. (According to this and other Gnostic texts, the resurrected Jesus spent some time instructing his disciples before making his final ascension to heaven.) Suddenly, in the midst of thunder and lightning, he is elevated to the heights of heaven in the midst of intense, blinding light. After thirty hours, Jesus returns, surrounded by three robes of light, with a brighter glow than when he had ascended. Henceforth he starts to instruct his disciples about his experiences and other occult matters.

The other two components of the text are the narrative of the story of Pistis Sophia and additional instructions to the disciples in the form of a dialogue. This article will endeavor to provide the main features of the Sophia myth, which, like the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke's Gospel and the Hymn of the Pearl in the Gnostic Acts of Thomas, is a profound revelation of the pilgrimage of the soul.

A Summary of the Sophia Myth

Upon his return from his ascent, Jesus describes to the disciples the hierarchies of the various planes that he has passed through on his way up. This long enumeration of entities is at first quite confusing, since nowhere in the text is there any explanation of this terminology or of the cosmological system into which those entities fit. Nevertheless, it is possible to set out a picture of the cosmic hierarchy of the text (see diagram below).

After several incidents with the entities of the lower planes, Jesus finds Pistis Sophia (whose name means "Faith Wisdom") below the Thirteenth Aeon, her original home. (Aeons, from the Greek aion or "age," are, in this text, entities governing zones of existence, or planes of consciousness, between heaven and earth.) She was alone, without her consort or her brothers, sorrowful and grieving on account of the torments that an entity known as the Authades, the Self-Centered One, had inflicted on her with the help of his emanations and the Twelve Aeons.

It happened that while in the Thirteenth Aeon, Pistis Sophia saw the Light of the Height on the veil of the Treasury of the Light, and started singing praises to that Light. From then on the Self-Centered One started to hate her, as did the Twelve Aeons below him. The Self-Centered One conceived a ruse to trick her. Pistis Sophia was led to look below and there she saw the light of another entity called the Lion-Faced Power. Not knowing that it was an emanation of the Self-Centered One, she decided to go after it, without her consort, to take its light, thinking that it would enable her to go to the Light of the Height. Once she descended from her place of origin, she was dragged further and further down into chaos, with the emanations of the Self-Centered One and the Twelve Aeons constantly chasing after her, trying to take her light away. When she finally saw Jesus surrounded by light, she cried to the Light of Lights and uttered a series of metanoias, often translated as "repentances."

The Symbolism

In all esoteric traditions the most important inner instructions are always transmitted in symbolic language (Hodson, 85-99), thus veiling the sacred from the eyes of the profane. At the same time the unveiling of the instructions offers a method for training the disciple's understanding.

In Theosophical terms, Pistis Sophia represents the soul, or more specifically, the part of the soul that incarnates; namely, the monad of consciousness in the concrete mind. Her name is a key to her role: Pistis is the Greek word for "faith." Not blind faith, but faith arising from total conviction of inner knowledge. Sophia is Greek for "wisdom." Thus her compound name indicates the fundamental principle (faith in the Light—an aspect of God) that enables her to undertake her mission, namely, the development of wisdom in both worlds. Her consort is Jesus, the aspect of the soul that unfolds the triple-natured higher Self in line with Pistis Sophia's progress in the material world. Jesus remained behind in the higher planes when she descended into chaos. This separation expresses the split in consciousness between the higher and lower nature of man. Although man is really one with his divine Self, the usual level of his consciousness cannot reach the spiritual planes; thus in the myth Pistis Sophia and Jesus are presented as separate entities.

The villain of the story is the Self-Centered One, standing for the ego, an appropriate name for the vain and egotistic "I," which always demands to be the center of attention and strives for the gratification of the senses, thus causing great affliction for the soul. The regents or archons of the Aeons are the main allies of the Self-Centered One, and they stand for the emotions and passions of man. Leading them is the Lion-Faced Power, an emanation of the Self-Centered One, standing for egotism, the strongest force driving man away from God and into chaos. These evil and dark powers are not so much outer demons as they are inner aspects of man. Their role is to seize and fix the consciousness onto the strong, heavy vibrations of emotions, passions, and fantasies associated with sense gratification and mental delusions such as attachment, pride, and ambition. Thus they are described as actively engaged in trying to pull man down, or in the language of the text, in taking away Pistis Sophia's light. This goes on unremittingly until Pistis Sophia's final liberation from chaos.

While chaos, in the system of this text, is a region of the underworld, the term is mostly used to convey the image of a psychological state of disorder. Since Pistis Sophia is the monad of consciousness, when it is said that she falls into chaos, it means that she becomes prey to mental disorders resulting from emotions, desires, and passions. She becomes conditioned by names and forms, by cultural values and mores, by a whole gamut of conditions that represent a virtual prison to the incarnated soul—in short, the delusion of separateness. Thus Pistis Sophia's descent into chaos is a symbolic description of man's entrance into the cycle of incarnation, where he will remain until his mission is accomplished.

The Cosmology

The cosmological system of the Pistis Sophia is presented in summary form in the diagram. It should be kept in mind that an entity can be active in its own plane as well as in the regions below it. Thus Pistis Sophia and the Self-Centered One, whose region of origin is the Thirteenth Aeon (left of the Psychic Plane), are seen quite active in the Hylic Plane (the Astral Plane) just below. The same can be said of Jesus acting as the First Mystery Looking Without (buddhi), who is active all the way along the three planes below its original region.

One novel feature of the Pistis Sophia's cosmology is that each plane is divided into three regions: right, middle and left. The right is superior and the left is inferior. The entities of the right have the function of establishing ideals or archetypes; those of the middle, of sustaining or ensuring proper conditions; and those of the left, in implementing the functions set for that plane. Their roles could be seen as that of father, mother, and son, or alternatively, as the seed, the earth, and the fruit. Moreover, each plane is a reflection of the planes above it. Thus the entities of the right in every plane act as delegates of the Logos, unfolding the fundamental model or archetype for its own plane. From this model the process of manifestation takes place, from ideation to creation, at every ensuing plane.

The unmanifest Godhead is not called God, but simply the Ineffable, the One about whom nothing is known and who is infinitely beyond any characterization by man.

The highest entity on the Divine Plane is called the Mystery of the Ineffable or the Logos. He is the source of all that exists, visible and invisible, having established the archetype of the whole plan of manifestation. Immediately below him is found the First Mystery, in its double aspects as Looking Within and Looking Without. The First Mystery is the mystery of unity, and its aspect as First Mystery Looking Within is atma or spirit, which encompasses and interpenetrates all that exists, providing the divine characteristic of immanence. The First Mystery Looking Without is the vehicle of atma, namely buddhi, also known in the Western tradition as the Christ.

The plane below is the Spiritual Plane, the Pleroma (from the Greek word for "fullness") or Treasury of the Light, which corresponds to the plane of abstract or superior mind. It corresponds also to the orthodox concept of heaven, where souls finally liberated from the world find their bliss. The supreme entity of this plane is Ieu, referred to by the titles of Supervisor of the Light and First Man. Also in the right of the spiritual plane is Melchizedek, the Great Receiver of Light, the Manu of the fifth, present Root Race.

Interpretation

The myth is a highly esoteric account of the soul's pilgrimage to the distant land—the material world—and its eventual return to the Father's house. But it is far more. It reveals the process involved in the supreme initiation that turns a man into a Master of wisdom.

In the text, after Jesus returns from the height "shining most exceedingly," the disciples ask him to "withdraw his light-glory" and then ask, "Rabbi, where didst thou go, or what was thy ministry in which thou didst go?" And Jesus replies, "Rejoice and exult from this hour on, for I have gone to the regions from whence I came forth."

Jesus then recounts his entire journey, from region to region, starting from the moment that he saw Mary, his mother "according to the material body" and then going through the Firmament, the Sphere, the Providence, and the Twelve Aeons. He narrates that all the archons and the powers therein were agitated and afraid because of his exceeding light. And he went on bringing order into their regions until he came to the Thirteenth Aeon. At that point he finds Pistis Sophia alone, below her place of origin, without her brothers. And he describes how the Pistis Sophia worked her way out of chaos with his help. The narrative is, of course, atemporal. Present, past, and future unfold as the eternal now in which Jesus spins his tale.

While this story looks like a myth, Jesus actually seems to be recounting one aspect of his experience at the Great Initiation, which probably took place during the thirty hours that he remained at the height. His recollection of the incidents on his way up has a surprising parallel with the life review that takes place in the dying process of every human being. We learn that this rapid but thorough process at the end of each incarnation teaches us the implications of our actions in this world. If we recall that the law of correspondence tells us, "What is above is like that which is below and that which is below is like what is above," we can infer that the Pistis Sophia tale seems like a monumental review of the actions of the soul throughout its long journey in this world. This process is mentioned in the Mahatma Letters: "The full remembrance of our lives will return back at the end of all the seven Rounds" (Barker, 171). But it seems also to take place when the evolutionary process is speeded up, as in the case of adepts that reach the Fifth Initiation in advance of the majority of the race.

Jesus seems to be revealing to his disciples his own journey in consciousness throughout his many lives in this world until his final process of "death" as a human being. He tells us that he will make a revelation at the very point when he finds Pistis Sophia below her place of origin: "I will tell you the mystery of how these things happened."

Thus the Pistis Sophia myth is the story of the passage of Jesus's soul through the world from time immemorial until his final triumph. Jesus and Pistis Sophia are presented as a pair, the two aspects of the soul, just like the two sides of a coin. Each has its role in the mystery of life. The progressive expansion of consciousness that eventually turns Jesus into a Master of Wisdom was in fact a reflection, on a higher level, of Pistis Sophia's slow and relentless battle in this world against all agents of matter that have constantly strived to take away her light. No mention is made of the great number of incarnations that Jesus must have gone through until that historical one in Palestine. During all those lives, regardless of the names by which he may have been known, Pistis Sophia, his soul, was the loyal heroine doing battle in this world.

We can now return to the myth. Pistis Sophia "falls" from her original region, pursuing a mirage, a reflection of the Light of the Height seen down below in the region of the Aeons, which represents the power of matter. This fall, due to ignorance, was her "original sin," but later on the text says that Pistis Sophia fell at the command of the First Mystery, that is, following an inner urge to comply with the divine plan. This would require her to incarnate in order to fulfill the final objective of having Spirit manifest fully through matter.

As Pistis Sophia descends into chaos, she takes upon herself the necessary vehicles for manifestation in the material world. Thus both on the astral and the physical planes the soul is "wrapped" with appropriate bodies to function in those planes. It will be remembered that the entities of the middle region of each plane have the motherly role of providing appropriate conditions and giving sustenance. Thus, on the astral plane, Providence (in Greek, heimarmene, also translated as "fate") bestows all the tendencies from past lives that provide recurrent opportunities for the individual to learn the lessons that remain to be learned. On the physical plane, the middle region provides a physical body for the individual that is adequate for the type of life that karma has in store for him.

The story expresses the reality as seen from the Height, that is, from a spiritual vantage point. Thus when Pistis Sophia complains that the archons of the Aeons are oppressing her, trying to take her light away, this might mean that the personality has experienced a heavy, aggressive, or unpleasant vibration, such as a feeling of hatred, or has told a lie. But the "oppression of the archons" can also mean experiences of immoderate sense gratification that to a worldly individual mean "to enjoy life" and "to have fun," but to the soul, seeing reality from the vantage point of the inner light, are seen as an affliction for which she will pay dearly.

Here is enacted the classical struggle of the forces of darkness against those of the Light. Pistis Sophia, the soul, strives to go to the Height but has to fight every inch of the way against evil and darkness. These forces are entrenched within her own castle—her emotions, desires, and passions under the command of the self-serving personality.

In her process of ascent, Pistis Sophia experiences thirteen metanoias, followed by eleven songs of praise to the Light. The word metanoia, generally translated as "repentance," is central to the Christian tradition. But its original Greek meaning was much broader than "repentance," indicating a change in one's mental state. Thus each metanoia actually indicates that the individual is undertaking an inner change—of attitude, values, and behavior. Since Pistis Sophia's region is the Thirteenth Aeon, she must symbolically effect thirteen changes of consciousness or metanoias, one for each region or aspect of herself. The much-heralded Way or Path in all esoteric traditions in fact entails this very process of inner change. This is made clear in The Voice of the Silence in the statement "Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou hast become that Path itself" (The Voice of the Silence, 12).

Nowhere in the Pistis Sophia do we see Jesus preaching any moral code of behavior. What is made clear is that man must renounce the world and transform his mind if he hopes to receive the mysteries that will open for him the inheritance of the Light.

While Jesus's parables and other public teachings often castigate conventional wisdom as expressed by compliance with the Mosaic Law (Borg, 97–116), the Pistis Sophia clearly links Jesus's teachings with the prophetic tradition. This is done ingeniously by means of interpretations advanced by the disciples after each metanoia uttered by Pistis Sophia, which in fact are quotations from the biblical Psalms and the apocryphal Odes of Solomon.

The metanoias and invocations uttered by Pistis Sophia suggest the protracted process of transformation needed to turn a worldly individual into "a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). On closer examination of these metanoias and songs of praise, we notice some turning points and fundamental changes in her situation as she is slowly freed from chaos. These turning points have a parallel with the five major initiations of the esoteric tradition.

The first turning point occurs when her insistent pleas for assistance from the Light of the Height are finally heard. These pleas have a parallel with the surrender of the mystic, implicit in Jesus's utterance "Thy will be done, Lord, not mine." In time a channel is opened up in the seeker's consciousness where the Light starts to be seen, or the Christ is born.

After Pistis Sophia's sixth metanoia, her sin of going down into chaos alone without her consort is forgiven, and Jesus leads Pistis Sophia "into a somewhat spacious region in the chaos." This more spacious "region" is actually an expansion of consciousness. Here the aspirant's interests in the coarser things of the outer world, with their heavy vibrations, begins to diminish. This relative respite from the oppressions of the archons, that is, of emotions and passions, expressed as an elevation into a more "spacious region in the chaos," seems to indicate what Theosophy calls the First Initiation.

Once the archons notice that Pistis Sophia has not been taken entirely away from chaos, they return with redoubled efforts to afflict her and she continues to utter her metanoias, thus continuing her inner transformation. After the ninth metanoia, her plea for help from the Light is partially accepted, and Jesus is sent by the First Mystery (the pure mind reinforced by the power of the inner Christ) to help her to secretly escape from chaos. From then on, Pistis Sophia, man's consciousness, perceives Jesus as a Light shining brightly, probably an indication of the opening of her spiritual vision, or of an expansion of consciousness arising from the Second Initiation. From then on, the man in the outer world has his mind progressively illumined by the Light of the Height, enabling him to carry out his work in the world as a light bearer, as Jesus did after his baptism in the Jordan, which represents the Second Initiation.

But the desires and emotions elicited by material things are still felt as the emanations of the Self-Centered One (the egotistic personality), and the powers of the archons (desires and passions) change form as the seeker conquers the grosser vibrations. After the thirteenth metanoia, Jesus sends a light-power to assist Pistis Sophia and to take her to higher regions of chaos. The initiation process continues with the fourteenth invocation, when a light-power is sent by the First Mystery (the power of Divine Spirit). These two powers meet together and become a great stream of light, forming a protecting crown over the head of Pistis Sophia. This seems to reflect the stage of illumination reached with the Third Initiation, in which periods of consciousness of unity with God and with all beings alternate with the usual dualistic consciousness of the world.

Now the joy of Pistis Sophia becomes the central theme of her songs of praise, in which she reiterates her determination to remain firm and never stray from the Light again. But the powers of darkness do not relent, and new and stronger emanations of the Self-Centered One are sent to join the others so as to oppress Pistis Sophia and take her back to chaos. After her sixteenth invocation, pleading for the help that had been promised, she is saved once again by the stream of Light, with the help of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel. Jesus also goes down into chaos to help Pistis Sophia. He enables her to step over the principal evil emanation of the Self-Centered One, a serpent with seven heads. This symbolizes the killing of the seeds of evil within man, namely the illusion of separateness.

Once the illusion of separateness is overcome, the initiate is entitled to enter nirvana. Thus, at this point, Jesus takes Pistis Sophia to a region just below the Thirteenth Aeon, her original station (probably a reference to the Fourth Initiation, which turns the seeker into an Arhat or enlightened one). The Initiate is very close to the other shore, his final destination.

Nevertheless, in spite of her high accomplishments, the soul is still subject to the affliction of the subtle material powers, and Pistis Sophia continues her invocations. Jesus warns her that the Self-Centered One is furious with her and will try a last attack by means of two dark and violent emanations in order to take her back into chaos. She is left alone, but Jesus promises to come back to help her if she feels oppressed and invokes his help. As indicated, the two dark and chaotic emanations (probably depression and despair) attack in earnest. This seems to refer to the period sometimes called as the Dark Night of the Soul (Underhill, 380–412), when the individual feels alone and abandoned by all and sundry, sinking into a period of depression that might lead to despair, until he is able to renounce his last remaining attachments to the world—namely, his feeling of being a separate "I"—prior to final and permanent union with God or the Light.

With the twenty-fourth invocation finally arrives the moment to take Pistis Sophia permanently out of chaos and into the Thirteenth Aeon. This might look like an anticlimax, a mere return to her original region. But at this point a touching surprise awaits the reader. It is said that Pistis Sophia reaches her final liberation at the exact moment that Jesus is at the Mount of Olives with his disciples in the process of being elevated to the Height in the midst of the Light. Thus we have an indication of the Fifth Initiation, both from the point of view of the glorified individuality, Jesus or the Higher Self, and of the soul, which is finally freed from the prison of the world. At that moment Pistis Sophia is finally reunited with her consort, Jesus, a parallel with the sacrament of the wedding chamber mentioned in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip and with the experience of the great mystics at the last stage of theosis—"deification" or union with God.

This mysterious initiation, which is said to be conferred by the initiate upon himself, is the end of the soul's pilgrimage. The man has learned all there is to be learned as a man, and embarks on another journey beyond the realm of humanity in the endless spiral of eternal evolution. The symbolic image of being elevated to the Height conveys the idea of a monumental expansion of consciousness to the adept, encompassing all planes from "earth" to "heaven."

Notice that at each of the five major turning points in the story of Pistis Sophia, her consort, Jesus, goes down into chaos to help her. This seems an indication that an integration of the two aspects of the soul, Jesus and the Pistis Sophia, occurs as part of the initiation process. The first four such integrations are partial or perhaps temporary. It is only with the final initiation that total and permanent integration of the higher and lower natures of man is finally accomplished.

We could conclude that the Pistis Sophia, like all sacred scriptures, is an encoded map to a precious treasure hoard. If we are able to interpret its symbols, we will be able to tread the Path and find the precious pearl of gnosis, the key that admits us to the kingdom of heaven.

The cosmology of the Pistis Sophia is extremely intricate. Although the diagram may seem complicated, it is actually a simplified version of the system presented in the text. Not all of the entities listed in the diagram are discussed in the article. 

References

Barker, A. T., ed. The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. Pasadena, Calif.: Theosophical University Press, 1975.

Blavatsky, H. P. "Pistis Sophia: Commentary and Notes." Collected Writings, vol. 13. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1982, 1-81.

 The Voice of the Silence. Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1992.

Borg, Marcus J. Jesus: A New Vision. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1991.

Doresse, Jean. The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics. New York: Viking, 1960.

Hodson, Geoffrey. The Hidden Wisdom in the Holy Bible, vol. 1. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1963.

Hurtak, J. J., and Desiree Hurtak. Pistis Sophia: A Coptic Gnostic Text with Commentary. Los Gatos, Calif.: Academy for Future Science, 1999.

MacDermot, Violet. The Fall of Sophia: A Gnostic Text on the Redemption of Universal Consciousness. Great Barrington, Mass.: Lindisfarne, 2001.

Mead, G. R. S. Pistis Sophia: A Gnostic Miscellany. London: Watkins, 1921.

Robinson, James, ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.

Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1987.

Schneemelcher, Wilhelm. New Testament Apocrypha. Two volumes. Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox, 1991.

Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. Oxford: One World, 1993.

Raul Branco, an economist, has taught at the University of Texas, City College of New York, and Columbia University and has worked for the United Nations and the Brazilian government. Now retired, he lives in Brasília, Brazil, where he dedicates himself to the study of comparative religion, the Christian tradition, and Gnosticism. He published a version of Pistis Sophia in Portuguese (Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 1997); and a second enlarged edition (Brasa­lia, Editora Teosafica, 2009). He has published two books in Portuguese: their English titles are The Teachings of Jesus and the Esoteric Christian Tradition, (Sao Paulo: Pensamento, 1999) and The Transforming Power of Early Christianity (Editora Teosafica, 2004). His e-mail address is raulbranco38@gmail.com.