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from Pistis Sophia

When Self-willed saw that Pistis Sophia now ‘shone as she had done from the beginning’ [p. 114] he was enraged and attacked her anew, sending emanations in the form of a serpent, a seven-headed basilisk and a dragon. Adamas the Tyrant joined forces with these until Sophia, very pressed, cried again to the Light, singing praises. Gabriel, Michael and the light-stream again went to her aid and this time she was led from the chaos, treading underfoot her oppressors. When the light-stream reactivated all the languishing parts inside Sophia she was able to see the Light and connect everything up. She became enlightened. 

Our usual state is that we have lost most of the Light, but we get little flashes of it in one area or another, what Zen Buddhists call moments of satori. We see something for a second, then it is gone. One reason why we cannot grasp and hold these moments is because we have not earned them. It is like trying to get greater perception by using LSD: when the trip is over, so is the insight, and people have to go back to the drug to regain it. Sex works in the same way. 

Over several lives Sophia had had moments of insight which mounted up until in this life she was able to hold on to the knowledge, it became just another inner factor because she had arrived at the level where she could understand it. She had been in the chaos many times and not remembered it, but finally she knew she was in the chaos, she knew that life was an illusion. She rejoiced that she was ‘relieved of the coats of skin’ [p. 128] − she had come to the understanding that she was not her body and cast off her negativities, the onion skins around her.