Bythos: Navigating the Depths of Your True Self

“Don’t be afraid to dive deep into your own damn mess,” Sandra snapped at me as I sprawled across the floor, clutching a whiskey bottle like a lifeline after a days-long bender. “You dance on the edge, never really smashing into the dirt. You skirt around the crater but never let yourself crash. You gotta hit rock bottom, man, because if you don’t, you’ll stay the same. Scared to face the music?”

“Makes it sound like taking a nosedive is something to aim for.”

“It is,” she shot back. “You’re always trying to steer the ship, or fly the plane, even drunk out of your mind. You never learn jack because you’ve never been shattered. Nothing’s ever hit you hard enough to teach you anything. You play it safe, even when you’re out of control. You need to be torn apart to get a glimpse of something real. Otherwise, you’ll wear down to nothing and still learn squat.”

“Lucky me, never winding up in an ER or a jail cell. But you’re painting this like it’s some kind of twisted virtue.”

“It’s not about good or bad. It’s the abyss, the raw core of you, your real shit.”

“Is God in that depth?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” she answered unsure. “But there is certainly something – something that’s neither good nor bad; it can be both. It’s the deep, the abyss, the depth of your soul, your true self.”

At that moment, her words were a mystery to me, but then I grasped it—intuitively, without full understanding—and I let myself fall, transforming into what I truly am.

This experience of Bythos, the depth, is a concept not unfamiliar in spiritual narratives, signifying the primordial nothingness from which everything is created. It’s the void that saints and seekers fall into to undergo transformation, a realm so primordial that it exists beyond the constructs of good and evil, beyond time itself.

Bythos, or the depth, as referenced in the story of Moses crossing the Red Sea, and in Genesis 1:1-2 described as “tohu” and “bohu” (“formless and empty”), represents this primordial void. The “darkness over the surface of the deep” and the “Spirit of God hovering over the waters” suggest a divine presence within the chaos, an invitation to explore the divine essence predating the cosmos’s structured existence. This state of Bythos is timeless, where past, present, and future merge into an eternal ‘now’.

Transcending the dualities of good and evil, Bythos is where all emanates, initiating creation from a state of absolute unity—Pleroma—beyond moral dichotomies. The binary of good and evil emerges with the Demiurge’s creation of the material world, a departure from Bythos’s perfection that sets the stage for beings to navigate moral judgments. The Gnostic journey seeks to transcend these binaries, aspiring for reintegration with the divine essence that predates creation.

The path to Bythos is not confined to conventional spirituality. It includes transformative experiences of saints and figures across religious traditions. Saul of Tarsus’s conversion into Saint Paul, Augustine of Hippo’s shift from hedonism to sainthood, Mary Magdalene’s redemption, and Francis of Assisi’s transformation from revelry to founding the Franciscan Order exemplify profound encounters with Bythos, facilitating transitions from vice to virtue.

When we are talking about virtue we have a singular aspect of “goodness” and according to Saint Francis “goodness” is when we do something we are meant to do. He said that the path to hell is plastered with good intentions. By that he meant that we should first discover what our purpose is in this world, and then do only that and not something else. Only when we do what we are supposed to do, can we do good. Anything else, although with a good intention, is a path to hell. And to know what we are made for, what we are supposed to be, we should descend into Bythos.

So where is this place or time and how can we reach it?

In Christianity, we understand God through three aspects: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit represents the divine spark within us, the essence through which we are created in the likeness of God. It is this divine spark that connects us to the infinite, echoing the principle of “as is above, so is below; as is within, so is without.” In other words, just as the universe is infinite in its macrocosm, so too is the infinite reflected within us in our microcosm.

What I am trying to convey is that within each of us lies Bythos, the primordial nothingness, waiting to be explored. And remarkably, we can access it through various means, whether through the path of goodness, such as deep meditation, or through experiences that might be considered less virtuous, such as indulgence in alcohol, drugs, or other aberrant behaviors. This concept of Bythos, this profound void filled with the Spirit of God hovering over the surface of the deep in darkness, becomes synonymous with God Himself. It is in this space of nothingness that we encounter the divine presence within us—the Holy Spirit. In our microcosm, Bythos is embodied by the Holy Spirit, guiding us towards a deeper understanding of our spiritual essence.

This Bythos appears also in Buddhism and Hinduism as Śūnyatā and can be reached through meditation. This concept is fundamental to the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism, founded by Nagarjuna. Śūnyatā challenges the notion of a permanent, unchanging essence in anything, suggesting instead that all things are interdependent and conditioned. The realization of Śūnyatā through meditation and wisdom is seen as a key insight leading to liberation from suffering and the cycle of rebirth (samsara).

In Hinduism, the concept of Bythos touches upon the ineffable and boundless nature of ultimate reality. For instance, the concept of Brahman in Advaita Vedanta—a non-dualistic school of Hindu philosophy—posits a singular, unchanging reality that is the essence of everything in the universe. The realization of one’s true self (Atman) as non-different from Brahman is considered the path to moksha, or liberation.

In Gnostic cosmology, Bythos is the Depth from which all emanations or Aeons spring forth, marking the beginning of creation. This concept challenges traditional notions of divinity and morality, emphasizing a journey back to the original state of wholeness. Bythos, thus, represents not only the origin of all existence but also the ultimate goal: a return to the undivided completeness that is the divine’s true nature.

Incorporating the insights from various spiritual traditions, the essay invites readers on a deep, personal journey beyond time, space, and morality to explore Bythos within themselves. It’s a quest for the divine essence, a path toward merging with the infinite source of all existence. By embracing our inner Bythos, we tap into the foundation of existence, where the divine spark within mirrors the cosmos’s infinite expanse. This inner journey is marked not by the rejection of life’s darker moments but by the recognition that within them lies the potential for profound transformation. This journey, whether through meditation, transformative life experiences, or spiritual practice, encompasses the essence of our search for meaning, connecting us and guided by with the universal and eternal divine presence within us.