#gnostic self-deification

In gnostic myths, the mediate deity is often represented as external to the self. But the mediate deity is in fact the higher self. The externality of this higher self is only a necessity of the lower self’s embodied, historical existence. Throughout their lives, gnostics labor to “make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside.” They realize, in other words, that the mediate deity is the true self, and therefore not ultimately “other” at all.

To sum up: there are two sides of God that correspond to two states of the human being. In Aristotelian terms, there is a God in actuality, and a God in potentiality. From one point of view, God has never left his state of perfect repose in pure being. This is “He Who Stood,” or the Infinite Power. From another point of view, God is in a process of constant evolution. He starts in the human being as the Seventh Power, though in seed form. The Seventh Power eventually attains realization in human consciousness. These two sides of God—namely, the eternally completed as well as the maturing God—are ultimately one, such that one aspect of God can say to the other: “I and you are one. What is before me is you. What is after you is I.”

Gnostics engage in self-deification not because the immanent self by itself completes the work of transformation, but because reflexive knowing reveals that the self includes the divine Other. This divine Other is integrated into the self to the point of identity. The reflexive process of identification with the divine Other is self-deification because the Other is also the greater self. The mediate God comes as divine Other, but in the process of inward revelation, a gradual “de-othering” of God occurs. Realizing oneself means becoming an “other” to the world while simultaneously making the divine Other the S/self.

Yet the identity between self and Savior can be even more radical. Epiphanius quotes a visionary encounter found in the Gospel of Eve. It begins: “I stood upon a high mountain and saw a tall man and another short one. I heard as it were the sound of thunder and drew near to hear.” A voice (of thunder?) addresses the narrator personally, declaring: “I am you and you are I, and wherever you are, there I am. I am sown in all people. Wherever you want to gather me, in gathering me, you gather yourself.”

And yet—despite this focus upon the self—there is (contra the heresiologists) nothing openly selfish about Simonian deification. Those who practice it are not focused on themselves as themselves, but on realizing themselves as part of a higher, divine self. “Simon” himself is not a self-deifier in the sense of someone who hubristically claims to be god. Indeed, such a claim—if it is true—can only be made when hubris is left behind. That is to say, only when one realizes that one’s self is not the true self, but the divine “Other,” does one realize one’s own divinity. This is “Simon’s” goal in The Great Declaration: to help make his readers other than themselves so that they can realize their greater divine selfhood.

Self-deification in gnostic thought is in some sense a reverse imitation of God. God engages in an eternal act of self-reflexivity that results in self-limitation and eventual incarnation in human persons. The high God’s archetypal self-reflexive act is a kind of self-creation, which makes possible the creation of everything else. All that exists is ultimately a multiply-refracted projection of God’s self.