Editing Gnostic Text/The Secret Book of John (section)

==The Garden of Eden==

The rulers led Adam to a garden full of edible plants and commanded him to eat for pleasure. But what is pleasurable to the rulers is actually bitter, and what is beautiful to them is actually grotesque. Their happiness is fraudulent, their trees are blasphemies, their fruits are lethal poisons, and their promise is death.

And in the middle of that garden the rulers planted the tree of their life.

Now I will teach you what the secret of their life is, what the character of their spirit is, and what plan they concocted with each other. The root of their tree is nasty, its branches are deadly, its shade is full of hate, its leaves are full of deceit, its flowers anoint one with evil, its fruit is death, its seed is passion, and it blossoms in the dark. Those who eat of it dwell in the underworld, and darkness is their place of rest.

The rulers called enlightened Reflection the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” and they stood in front of her in the hope that Adam would not glimpse her Fullness and see his shameful nakedness for what it was.

But I, the Savior, coaxed Adam to eat of its fruit.

I, John, asked the Savior: “Lord, was it not the snake who convinced Adam to eat?”

The Savior laughed and replied, “The snake told Adam to eat of the rulers’ flawed and corrupted food, which consists of desire, so that Adam would become useful to them. The first ruler knew that Adam was disobeying him because of enlightened Reflection dwelling within him and making his thinking clearer and sharper than that of the first ruler. For this reason, the first ruler decided to attempt to take back the power that he had imparted to Adam. So he made a deep sleep fall over Adam.”

I asked the Savior, “What do you mean by ‘deep sleep?’”

The Savior answered: It is not what you have heard from Moses, who said that the first ruler made Adam lie down. Instead, it refers to Adam’s perception. For as Yaldabaoth said through another prophet, “I will dull their minds, so that their eyes will not be able to see and their thoughts will not be able to comprehend.”

Enlightened Reflection hid from Yaldabaoth inside Adam, because the first ruler wanted to tear her out of his side. But darkness cannot grasp enlightened Reflection. So Yaldabaoth seized part of his own power from Adam and performed another act of creation. He made this new creature female after the image of enlightened Reflection that he had seen. And he put the power he had taken from Adam – not his rib, as Moses said – into her.

Adam gazed at the woman who now stood next to him. At that moment, enlightened Reflection revealed herself. She pulled away the veil that the first ruler had draped over Adam’s mind. Where before he had been in a dark, drunken stupor, he now found himself sober. Recognizing his spiritual partner, he said, “Her bones are my bones, and her flesh is my flesh.” A man leaves his father and mother for such a wife, and the two of them become one, for his true love has been sent to him.

Now Wisdom, our sister who had innocently descended to earth in the form of enlightened Reflection to find what she lacked, was called Life – the mother of the living – by the Forethought of the Invisible Spirit. Thanks to Wisdom, the living have been able to taste perfect gnosis.

For my part, I took the form of an eagle and landed on the tree of gnosis – which is the Reflection that came from completely enlightened Forethought – so that I could teach humankind and lift them out of the depths of sleep. Through my teaching, Adam and Eve realized that they were living in naked corpses. And enlightened Reflection continued to elevate their thoughts.

When Yaldabaoth saw that humankind had turned away from him, he cursed the earth he had made. He did not perceive the mystery that had been introduced by the divine plan. In an act that showed his angels just how obtuse he was, he expelled Adam and Eve from the garden and gave them inky darkness for clothes.