"Seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom;
yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom;
seek learning, even by study and also by faith."
Doctrine and Covenants 88:118

"And the gatherer sought to find pleasing words, worthy writings, words of Truth."
Ecclesiastes 12:10



Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Jung - Septem Sermones ad mortuos, Sermon One

One of the reasons I picked up "The Gnostic Jung" was that it contained his Septem Sermones ad Mortuos.  This Neo Gnostic document has some interesting nuggets in it.  From Sermon One -

"We ask the question: how did creation originate?  Creatures indeed originated but not the created world itself, for the created world is a quality of the Pleroma."

Interesting in light of D&C 93:33. 

 "Differentiation is the essence of the created world....That is why man himself is a divider, inasmuch as his essence is also differentiation....the undifferentiated principle and lack of discrimination are all a great danger to created beings.  For this reason we must be able to distinguish the qualities of the Pleroma.  Its qualities are the PAIRS OF OPPOSITES, such as

     the effective and the ineffective
     fullness and emptiness
     the living and the dead
     difference and sameness
     light and dark
     hot and cold
     energy and matter
     time and space
     good and evil
     the beautiful and the ugly
     the one and the many
     and so forth"

The Pleroma is a borrowed Latin word meaning "fullness."  Its use in this sermon evokes shades of a phrase from Second Nephi chapter two ("all things...a compound in one" v. 11), and like Lehi, Jung juxtaposes this undifferentiated oneness as an antithetical condition to the possibility of the creation.  For Jung, if we were (hypothetically) to "submerge into the Pleroma itself" we "cease to be created beings.  Thus we become subject to dissolution and nothingness."

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