A Gnostic Take on Christ
The Mesotes: Christ or Christos?
Re-Thinking the Christ
This article explores a new way of looking at some fairly well known phenomena in connection with some less well known ideas - without necessarily advocating belief in that new way.
It’s mostly exploratory. It’s not intended to attack anyone’s religious ideas or attachments - sometimes it’s fun (even fruitful) just to see things differently for a moment or two…
As explored in the detailed pages of my second book, many near-death experiencers (NDEers for short) encounter a luminous intelligence they interpret—particularly if they have lived within a Judeo-Christian social matrix and don’t know any better—as being the Biblical “Jesus” (Yehoshua/Yeshua in the Hebrew).
But there is another angle on this, raised by gnostic researcher John Lamb Lash, author of the compelling Not In His Image.
As Lash observes, in most versions Sophia the Wisdom Goddess’ “fall” into earth ties her to another Aeon (besides Thelete), specifically the Aeon Christos, meaning “anointing power.”
These Aeons or “gods” are not so much beings as they are currents or information, light, and energy. The info-energetic current dubbed Christos also received its name based on its “flow signature” as detected “paranormally” by the seers known as the Sons of Seth/Gnostics.
In cosmic terms, anointing is the capacity of an Aeon to morph from a porous, foamlike state into a fluidic, dewlike state…imagine foam turning to dew. That is anointing in the pleromic domain. The product of anointing, chrism, is the love sweat of the gods. In the ecstacy of their dancing the Aeons break into a fragrant sweat, a bright, dewy, eruption. This is anointing at the cosmic level. (Lash, Not in His Image)
This reads suspiciously like plasma cosmology (see “bright, dewy, eruption”), as Lash notices, pointing out that astrophysicists accept the presence of “molecular dew” in the galactic arms (Kenoma/outer chaos), though perhaps not yet at the galactic core.
As the story goes, sensing Sophia’s growing distress at the biospheric chaos on earth, Aeons in the galactic core send the Christos to intercede, after which the Christos leaves a kind of radiant residual afterimage in the biosphere.
This is germane to our detailed analysis of NDEs and afterlife encounters in Book 2 (get on the wait list here). In Lash’s explanation, Christos helped Sophia to bring her autopoetic life processes into a more manageable and harmonious state, thus creating “order out of chaos.”
Gnostic initiates “saw the Aeon Christos as a form of divine intelligence informing all life on earth with self-regulatory powers.” (Lash)
Thus, “Christ(os)” was concerned not exclusively with humankind, but the entire biosphere, including plants and animals—an alien notion to fundamentalist doctrine which tends to dissociate man from nature and create a conceptual schism that has since facilitated massive destruction of the ecosphere, as well as a loss of deep self-awareness (assuming we ever had any).
Lash traverses an epistemological and semantic mine field which I will only scratch the surface of in order to get to the central point I want to make. Initiates used the made up name Mesotes for the specific effect of this divine act of mercy on humans and animals alike. (Meso means “middle,” “mid way,” and thus Mesotes means “medium, mean, intermediary.”)
As Lash points out, the difference between Christos and Christ is massive.
Christos points to the inherently “divine” nature of humanity, it transcends a historical personage. The Coptic IS ETONE (“the ever-living or everlasting Jesus”) is another name for the Mesotes. IS ETONE is an intrapsychic process and/or presence transcending individual personalities and pointing to our animal-human nature, as well as our species-self connection, in diametric opposition to salvationist religion.
We only know about the “Christic intercession” thanks to the testimony of trained seers/initiates in the Mysteries. Learning directly from the divine, milky light of Sophia (the Organic Light), these seers were instructed in events from the remote pre-history of planet earth.
Some might refer to this as “reading the Akashic record,” though I sense the possibility of a distortion in this interpretation, due to the fact that the intelligence of Sophia was identified as the specific source of instruction and teaching by the initiaties—it was not a passive repository they were tapping into, but a singular living presence.
Lash explains that as the initiates investigated the Christic intercession they detected a sort of living after-image, that of the Aeon Christos—a presence that exists in the “Dreamtime,” outside of our spatio-temporal reference frame, or, if you prefer, in reciprocal time-space/imaginal realm. The gnostic term would be pleroma.
Altered states of consciousness—such as those used by the initiates—are the key to accessing the Dreamtime/pleroma and communing with these cosmic intelligences, whether “Sophia” or “Christos.”
Thus, from this viewpoint, the “everlasting Jesus” is the persistent “after-image” of the Aeon dubbed Christos.
Is it this intelligence so many people encounter during NDEs and interpret through their distorted perceptual lenses as the Biblical “Jesus”? Early Christians referred to the appearance of this being as “parousia, a palpable and immanent spiritual presence,” though interpretation gradually devolved into the “second coming” of the “Saviour,” which obviously never happened (and never will, because the Christos intelligence which helped Sophia to cope with her abundant lifeforms never left!)
Commenting on the various historical sources of the Jesus persona is far beyond the scope of this article, so we’ll have to save that for elsewhere.
From this viewpoint, the “everlasting Jesus” is really the Mesotes, the after-image of the Christos still living in the timeless Dreamtime. It does not have a human form but can present itself in this way, known in Gnostic teachings as docetic manifestation. As Lash puts it, “Christos imparts its biopsychic effect in our own image, not his.” (Emphasis added)
We might well say the same of the “Archons” and their blind idiot leader Ialdaboath, nuisance egregorial entities I suspect were unconsciously created by humanity many moons ago, another can of worms in itself.
Christos imparts to the near-death experient perhaps one thing above all, as it serves its integrative purpose: grace.
Deriving order out of the inner chaos, the Mesotes/Christos, has a unique psycho-spiritual impact which stays with NDEers for the rest of their lives. Amidst the many interesting after-effects and benefits imparted to NDEers, it may be the spiritual grace that stands out above all.
Hence “he” is the “saviour” because he/Christos serves a psycho-integrative effect and reorients consciousness in life-affirming ways, partly through the activation of empathy and compassion, not merely for ourselves, but all beings including the planet.
Thus, as Lash notes, the Mesotes encounter serves to soften our egoic boundaries and facilitates a much more broadly holistic worldview and self-identity, de-throning our anthropocentrism (unless the experient naively fixates on superficial interpretations of the experience and misses the point).
It is also important to note that after NDEs featuring encounters with the Mesotes function—typically interpreted by Westerners who don’t know any better as “Jesus”—concern for planetary welfare and a sense of connection to—or more compassionate attitude towards—nature are typically increased, as we might expect of an encounter with the Christos/Mesotes energy.
Note that the supposed “Jesus” sometimes encountered in NDEs never cares about the question of which theology or religion is “best,” but is only concerned with enhanced relationships—do we act out of love or not? (The being also never identifies itself as Jesus, tellingly—at least not in a single NDE account I’ve seen in the last 20 years. Dr. Ken Ring initially made that observation after studying thousands of such accounts of altered states of consciousness—I can only nod in assent.)
The Mesotes/Christos is the principle of syntropy/negentropy and harmony (hence “order out of chaos”); this is the effect love has on energy systems: it enhances coherence, order, and syntropy.
This Christos/Mesotes “being” is an instinctual and immanent living presence, which, as Lash observes, serves a subliminal, non-intrusive guiding role (if we let it). It is true that those, like NDEer George Ritchie, who encounter this luminous, loving presence directly are most definitely seen and registered by it, and thus retained in the living “memory” (database) of the Christos Aeon.
Lash is adamant that the Mesotes hovers in the atmosphere but is experienced as an internal vision/phantom—indeed that is the only way an imaginal entity or extraphysical dimension can be experienced.
Put another way, this is how we perceive information in the nonlocal, holographic quantum information field (or pleroma) as it emerges into consciousness.
This level of perspective is largely missing in the NDE literature and allows us to add layers of sophistication and meaning to the NDE experience and its ramifications. The Mesotes/Christos program/instinct is both immanent and yet experienced/perceived as an external being.
Thus, it is both our own inner guidance and a very much transpersonal intelligence—fundamentally a “Pleromic Aeon,” meaning an informational code or program in the “source field.” Beholding the Mesotes/Christos instinct and inner guide in altered states (such as NDEs), we encounter an anthropomorphic form simply because we “are beholding the reflection, not of an individual self [such as “Jesus”], but of a species that recognises itself.” (Lash)
Specifically this experience, Lash tells us, “is a direct encounter with an intermediary between the biosphere and the human mind.” De Chardin’s “noosphere” (the biosphere as a medium of consciousness) is not as precise or deliberate a notion as the Gnostics’ Mesotes function, as Lash notices.
Moreover, the Mesotes was traditionally identified as theriomorphic (having an animal form rather than human); indigenous Amerindian cultures, for instance, encountered it as a “power animal.” This animal-human symbiotic relationship beautifully exemplifies the essence of the Mesotes’ integrative function. Man and animal benefit most from a reciprocal relationship as opposed to a human-centric top-down hierarchical dynamic of domination.
According to Lash, the Hindu Manu and Native American Manitou are versions of the Mesotes.
It has evidently been encountered in many different guises over millennia. In 1939, Jung—immersed in studies on alchemy and psychology—encountered the Mesotes in a vision of a greenish-coloured Christ on the cross at the foot of his bed:
…I saw that his body was made of greenish gold. The vision came to me as if to point out that I had overlooked something in my reflections: the analogy of Christ with the aurum non vulgi [“not the common gold”] and the viriditas of the alchemists. When I realized that the vision pointed to this central alchemical symbol, and that I had had an essentially alchemical vision of Christ, I felt comforted.
The green gold is the living quality which the alchemists saw not only in man but also in inorganic nature. It is an expression of the life-spirit, the anima mundi or filius macrocosmi, the Anthropos who animates the whole cosmos. This spirit has poured himself out into everything, even into inorganic matter; he is present in metal and stone.
Jung particularly noted the greenish tinge of the image, an obvious nature association (528 hertz rests in the green part of the electromagnetic spectrum in which so many billions of the plant kingdom’s chlorophyll-laden leaves, tendrils, and fronds find expression).
Lash points out that in some respects the Mesotes acts like a mindless automaton, because it is a function not an entity—its “interest” is not in the individual human, but healthily integrating the homo sapien into the biospheric collective (hence the alchemical overtones). 20th century seer and Theosophist Geoffrey Hodson described the members of the angelic/devic hierarchy he clairvoyantly observed in a similar manner, noting their generally impersonal disposition.
The Mesotes “program” is like the GPS in a car which guides the human’s navigation of the car so as to get both car (read: earth) and human passenger to the right destination—together and in “one piece”/peace. From Lash’s perspective, the Christos program imbued the biosphere with instinctual programs that allowed the species of earth to coexist and coevolve.
This instinct becomes manifestly evident in many NDEers as they integrate their experience. No longer can they abide by the insane notion that their actions have no consequences, or that they somehow exist apart from the rest of humanity or the planet supporting us.
(I feel compelled to note for the record at this moment that I’m NOT on the ludicrous “anthropogenic climate change” band wagon, nor do I support smart cities, the internet of bodies, or any other related state-sanctioned tyranny.)
I see this integrative tendency in my sound/DNA activation work play out in some recipients. People want to escape the concrete jungles and connect with the land. Of the six primary tones I work with, the 528 Hz fork carries perhaps the preeminent (or most homely) frequency, sometimes known as “love hertz.”
Bonus Trivia
In New Age theology (which I tend to view with educated cynicism), the “keeper” or Chohan of the green ray is believed to be the “ascended master” Hilarion. Two former acquaintances deep in a beguiling New Cage rabbit hole once told me that my “higher self” was Hilarion, an assertion I did not enthusiastically embrace.
Symbolically though, their warped perception made a lot of sense: He represents a love of truth, science, music, healing, and the green ray (528)—in an abstract sense they were sort of on the right track! This ALL describes me, and my favourite colour has always been—you guessed it—green.
⚠️ This article is an edited excerpt from my forthcoming opus The Grand Illusion - Book 2!
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Host of Truthiverse podcast. Author of the epic, “The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science and Spirituality — Book 1.” (Book 2 is nearly finished!) Founder of The Truthiversity 📽
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Really eye opening futuristic common ground for the evolutionary conscious collective unconscious Great read Mr Murphy!