3 Factors, 2 Principles, 1 Above

Gnostic teachings sometimes speak of Three Factors or Roots that explain everything in experience. Sometimes the subject is a contrast between Two Principles that are irreconcilable and opposed, and they may be said to be in eternal opposition, in principle, because of qualitative, essential, contrary differences. Sometimes a primary Monad, One Above, is emphasized, a One that emanates a Spiritual Fullness that is expressed through Totalities which experience crisis and fall from Spiritual Fullness, but will become complete, healed, and recovered, when they eventually realize the essence of their Origin and receive shaping by the kindness of the Light of the Fullness.

Instead of speaking of Three-Root systems and contrasting them with Two-Root systems or attempting to contrast Absolute Dualism with a so-called Mitigated/Moderated form of Dualism -- I find it more helpful to understand such differences in teaching by exploring the differences of emphasis, the different sorts of questions that are implied, the different aspects of reality that are explored or the sorts of problems that are addressed by such texts.

From such attempts to understand these teachings, it has become clear to me that each sort of teaching is individually suited to different sorts of questions, pertaining to different aspects of reality, from different angles. As a consequence, over-emphasis of such differences in the number of initial principles or how sequence of events unfold in relation to principles, can easily lead to missing out on distinct insights on different subjects and issues treated by very different sorts of teachings.

Once this is understood, different sorts of questions become interesting, and it becomes conceivable that someone might learn from each of these different sorts of teachings, as part of the same Gnostic tradition. One of the issues involved, is the function of different sorts of teaching within different sorts of Gnostic Paths.

We could ask whether there are three or two roots. It is an interesting question. But what is a root, and why is the question being asked?

We could ask whether there is one root that emanates and becomes involved in a crisis that results in a split. We could ask whether instead there are two eternally separate root principles. But is the subject that bothers us is the essence of primary principles, the logic of causes? Distinguishing realities and separating out things with wisdom to heal and return home, may be a crucially important and timely issue to explore. Or are we currently more concerned with how a spark of awareness comes to experience darkness and error and confusion, from the point of view of a spark of awareness that becomes lost?

At a given point in time, depending upon the issues that are most troublesome, or the concerns that are most intimately meaningful to us, we might gravitate to a particular sort of text or teaching, one that is more directly relevant than others. Or we may simply gravitate towards a given explanatory framework or interpretation, while enjoying texts and teachings that explore other related questions from other angles.

It is conceivable that some Gnostic traditions made use of material from very different Gnostic viewpoints, when it came to the subject of primary root principles, at different points along the path, depending upon the individual and their insight or current needs. In any case, each overall framework contains insights that are addressed by the others, but the framework itself emphasizes certain insights.

These sorts of teachings all pertain to Gnosis, though in different ways, with differences in subject or manner of approach.

Three Explanatory Factors
In Experience

There is Dimness in the Darkness. Light has been reflected in the field of interaction. There are now Hidden Sparks/Seeds of Light. The field of interaction -- agitated -- consists of processes, changes -- it is an unstable mixture. Light shines upon a permeating spirit that borders Light and Darkness. But the Light shining upon Spirit causes activity in the Spirit that results in Light becoming reflected in Darkness. And so a chain-reaction of effects is set into motion, until things are brought back to a state of rest, with the darkness de-activated and separated-out, contained.

Body craves against itself, and also experiences resistance from soul. The soul is reflection of Light from Above. As such a reflection, the soul may be purified or oriented more consistently towards the Light. A spark/seed of light may be hidden/sown deep within the soul.

The field of interaction is like an emulsion of water and oil. Where does the emulsion go when oil separates from the water and rises? What is the cause of the disturbance that results in such a mixture?

Such questions are raised by Gnostic teachings that speak of Three Factors that are said to explain all things in experience.

Is the field of interaction in the middle a primary principle, a root or cause in-and-of-itself? What would we mean by 'primary'? What might we mean by root? What are we expecting of causes?

In classic Gnostic 'Three-Root' systems, two of the Roots are Light and Darkness.

The qualities of Light and Darkness contrast each other in a distinctive way. Such qualities are concerned with a certain TYPE of question about reality.

The experience of interaction in the middle between such opposed principles, has a quality of potential and of mixture, and as such, it can be considered relevant to a different TYPE of aspect of reality, or different TYPE of question. Such questions are asked in a different manner than questions which are primarily more relevant to issues of contrasting principles of essence expressed in terms of good/evil or light/dark or knowledge/ignorance in the abstract. Such questions of primary contrast may be understood and explored in terms of primary opposed principles apart from concerns of the field of interaction.

It is the activity of contact between Two primary Principles, the nature of such interaction, and the field in which they meet, that is emphasized in Three-Root systems. The experience in the field of spiritual potential in the Middle, is one TYPE of principle, and its type is characterized by its relational aspects to Two other Principles.

Those Two other Principles are not characterized primarily as relational, in either Three-Root or Two-Root systems. Each of the Two other Principles are of a type where one is logically contrary and in essential practical opposition due to differences of a fundamental qualitative kind. And so the Three-Root Systems, though they may assert initially Three Principles from the beginning, one of those principles is by essence intermediary and relational to the other two as a field of potential interaction. As such, it isn't the same kind of principle.

Three principles of interpretation are common in Gnostic texts and teachings. We can experientially discuss matter/body, psyche, and spirit/light, as three factors within texts and teachings that are framed within one of the other systems. Discussions of the experience of fetters, agitated experience, and a state of rest that comes from Above, can be viewed from a either framework of Three Root Principles, or Two Principles, or as part of a single drama of a spark that falls from Divine Fullness and returns Home. A middle realm, a cosmos of psyche/soul, is an important concept in other systems that represent such a realm as derived or secondary.

Three-Root systems can be very expressive of the quality of the experience of interaction, and may emphasize agitated activity in the Middle. With emphasis on this 'middle' factor, such systems can potentially express quite a bit of complexity.

Other systems often introduce such a 'middle' factor, in the course of explaining complexities, as a derived or perhaps as a secondary effect of other principles in interaction. And so despite differences in how primary roots/principles are envisioned, or the number of such primary roots/principles, in practice three factors or types of reality are often integral to complexities involved in the explanations of the principles of mixture and interaction that are offered by these other systems, nonetheless.

Two Contrary Principles
In Logical Opposition
Contrary Influences, Orientations
Sources, Destinations

The experience of contrasts pertains to questions of the orientation of our essence. For example, how do we orient towards what is better instead of that which is worse? The questions that arise from experiencing movement towards something better, questions of evaluating what is better, recognizing something better, lead to questions about why there are such contrasts. Certain contrasts are not only viewed in experience as incompatible, but can be traced to principles that are logically entirely incompatible and contrary. Such logic has a reality to it, it is not mere argument by definition.

For example: compassionate Wisdom is NOT apathetic reckless foolish cruelty. The logical categories involved can be expressed very clearly, language can articulate such differences clearly enough for communication to occur between people on such subjects. Whatever the limits of language, it is possible to express such things and convey meaning with such terms. Such communication is real. The quality of our experience of those who orient towards the one or the other principle, is very different. Such distinctions are important in life and in issues of character. We seek to orient towards the one sort of principle, and not the other. These matters are part of concrete experience, though the expression of such evaluations involves categories that are more abstract.

But if it weren't for questions of the essence of causes and effects, we might just speak of contrast and evaluation and movement, or of some kind of continuum.

Contrast and evaluation are perceptions or mental activities, and a continuum can be seen as a tool for evaluating a degree of mixture or contrast, but questions of essences and causes involve different considerations. Movement can describe transformations, but does not offer much help in explaining the cause or essence of qualitative change. A continuum that is thought to be caused by something spiritual and good, may be said to become dim or diluted, and this could explain certain degrees of contrast.

But how could something resulting entirely from a source that is by essence good and spiritual become anti-spiritual and perverse, sadistic, and evil, without some other cause being involved? And how could the qualitative effect be so starkly different, if the essence of the cause is not also qualitatively different and not merely distinct? No matter what sort of movement is described, if there is only one cause, there are difficulties in explaining qualitative differences or radical transformations.

How can such radical and qualitative differences occur if all reduces to a single principle? If the nature of movements, associated with the nature of the subjects that are moving, and the essence of the causes of such subjects, and the essence of the causes of the movements, if such causes are all reducible to the same cause, how will the result be effects that do not share in essential qualities of the causes?

And so a contrary cause can be spoken about, a principle of ignorance that is intimately associated with the nature of matter and the perversity of evils we experience. The essence of compassion is not sadism, and vice versa. The causal principle, the orientation, the influence involved, is different in QUALITY, the difference is QUALITATIVE.

The principle itself, the causal influence that results in such a continuum being manifest in such contrary qualities is inherently different from the source of goodness and spirit and light. It is not traced to the good and spiritual principle of light, in radically dualist teachings. Such teachings are concerned with the realities of contrast and qualitative differences of influence, the purifying and healing effects of clear differentiation.

One Above

Many Gnostic texts involve stories that emphasize One principle (sometimes called a Monad) Above, relating such a principle to sparks that experience a crisis in ignorance and matter and then are salvaged, purified, and returned.

Such stories take a vantage point of a spark of consciousness that experiences crisis, integrating a whole range of experiences in one story. The story forms a unified whole, and a given individual spark can view different aspects of development together as a whole, in terms of returning reflected or trapped light home, to the source of such reflection or trapped light. Such stories are useful in treating questions of personal perspective of questions of identity, crisis, healing, and return, and questions of how a being with awareness comes to experience such a world.

After a crisis where Wisdom looses power, or where Light is stolen by something in the Darkness that resulted from an Error, Ignorance is said to become deluded and increasingly perverse, and a boundary separates the Monad and its Spiritual Fullness from the Emptiness of the Dark Cosmos below.

A state of division, a dual condition, then becomes problematic. A qualitative divide between Spirit and Matter exists and is involved in a crisis that results in a salvage mission by the realm of Spirit Above. A Cosmos shaped and ruled in perverse ignorance is Below, but it is shaped and ruled nonetheless with influence from Above, so that reflected light may be salvaged in spite of such conditions. Such reflected light is in an in-between condition, in 'the middle'.

What in other systems was described as primary root causes, is viewed in terms of conditions or resultant or derived effects. Or perhaps it is more appropriate to say that the other systems deal with the principles, or root essential categorical differences that explain the cause for such derived effects, the causes for them being so out of harmony with the nature of that which is in principle and at its root spiritual and good. In any case, the manifest perversity of ignorance is said to derive from lesser emanations that encounter darkness or go outside the Divine Fullness somehow. Just how that is possible and why distance or outstanding or error would have such a radically contrary quality, is not quite the sort of focus of such teachings, but the radical quality of the divide does suggest a deep underlying or implied Dualism to me, just as the importance of a 'middle' or 'psyche/soul' realm suggests relevance to Three-Root teachings.

Different Sorts of Questions
Different Teachings

If a metaphysical crisis occurs, if an effort of wisdom over-extends itself into darkness that is undesired, how is it that such an error would become so tragic, why is the QUALITY of such ignorance experienced so horribly and perversely? When these issues become problematic, discussions of Two eternal and contrary Principles may be very helpful, as they treat these issues very directly, in terms that are appropriate and from a different angle that does result in interesting explanations. But why the disturbance and agitation and mixture, why the contact, and how can the separation be maintained? When such issues remain problematic, discussions of Three Roots can become very relevant.

My own view is that there are two distinct eternally separate Principles. One of them has effects that are good, spiritual, associated with the light of insight and wisdom. It seems to me that this teaching explains questions that arise from exploring and teachings that speak from the other vantage-points. Again, in my view the main reasons for such difference of viewpoint, are the different questions that each perspective takes as a basis or primary concern, or the different aspects of reality that are discussed.

In any case, taking just about any individual Gnostic text that appeals to you, and reflecting deeply, can lead to considerations on any of the frameworks and themes mentioned above, even though the texts we have are often enough 'mitigated dualist' or leave questions unanswered as to some of the questions that were raised.

It seems to me that following such issues, questions, and reflections, wherever they lead, and exploring, can lead to some kind of personal insight, whether the result is agreement with me or with any of the above frameworks, or not.

What is called a 'mitigated dualist' sort of framework, with a Monad (One) Above that emanates a Fullness which then becomes involved in a crisis ans salvage-operation, is expressed in a number of classic Gnostic texts, and such a framework seems implied by many other texts which are not explicit on such matters. Sethian texts such as The Apocryphon of John are in this category.

Manicheans and later some of the Bogomils and Cathars taught that there were Two Principles, and it seems to me that at least some of the earlier Gnostics also held such a view, as it pertains to subjects and questions that arise from their texts. But the best text for Two Principles is the Cathar Book of Two Principles. Part of this work is found in Meyer and Barnstone's Gnostic Bible, but the whole text is found in Heresies of the High Middle Ages, eds. Wakefield and Evans.

The Three-Root Systems are best described in Hyppolitus: Refutation of All Heresies Book V, especially the later section on certain Sethians, but afterwards for those who are interested, the sections on the Peretae and Naaseni are also worth exploring. The Paraphrase of Shem from Nag Hammadi is an example of a text that presents a Three-Root framework, but it does not make for the easiest reading. So I recommend Hyppolitus.

Taken together, different aspects of the problem of spirit in matter, are explored. I would suggest that if the overall framework or assertion of root/primary causes/principles, is not appealing or is not in accord with your belief, that you might wish to consider other aspects of the texts that may be fruitful in your path, or consider how questions raised or perhaps unresolved by such a framework, or by other frameworks, can address issues of relevance.

If, in the course of such explorations, some insight is gained regarding the essence of a hidden principle that is Good and Spiritual, or the essence of something inside of you, or the nature of some of the challenges of experience here in this world, as a spiritual being, then you will have been blessed with some good fruit. And that ultimately, is the point of such texts, to catylize personal insight relevant to your own awareness, your own measure of Gnosis, on your own path.