So this thread is juxtaposed with the
Gnosticism Thread on Skeptiko by which I mean there'll probably be some overlap but going to try and further the conversation rather than just reproduced everything or rehash every old argument...naturally there'll be revisiting as new people contribute and old people re-engage.
I also wanted to include Hermeticism as I think it's a similar outlook on reality but I find it less melodramatic than World-as-Prison Gnosticism (which isn't to say I 100% disagree with the latter, but I'm not that pessimistic about reality).
Buried in the Sands of Time: The Gospel according to Thomas
Quote:In 1945, an extensive anthology of the sayings of Jesus was found preserved in the dry sands of a tomb near Nag Hamadi, Egypt. Going back to a Greek text dating about 100 AD, this Coptic text begins with a prologue that attributes its recording to the apostle Thomas. Applying the psychological approach which has led Sri Aurobindo to re-discover the esoteric meaning of the Rig Veda, the author elucidates the inner meaning of the Gospel according to St. Thomas. A brief biography of the author is appended.
For me it's hard to see why criticisms of the Gospel of Thomas can't be extended to entirety of the New Testament (or, for that matter, to many religious scriptures around the world):
-Questioning authenticity.
-Silliness/Absurdity/Evil.
-Challenging whether God or one of Its incarnations actually said what is in scripture.
But of course it's convenient to only apply these kinds of criticism selectively.
Michael Prescott has an interesting new blog post about Stevan Davies's translation and annotation of the Gnostic work the Apocryphon of John:
Pleroma is where the heart is
Quote:This complete range of God's mental capabilities is known as the pleroma, which means something like "the fullness of God's mind" or "God's mind in full." The pleroma is peopled (one might say) by a cast of characters corresponding to the various mental processes and functions of God's mind.
All was well until one of the mental faculties, Wisdom, decided to attain self-awareness for herself. (In Greek, the word for wisdom is Sophia, and so Wisdom is construed as feminine.) This was a mistake. Operating independently, without the rest of the pleroma to assist her, Wisdom was unable to create true self-awareness. Instead she gave birth to a misshapen, incomplete mental faculty, a kind of miscarriage. This abysmal creation was dubbed Yaldabaoth.
Ashamed of her error, Wisdom removed her unwanted child from the pleroma altogether, placing him in a lower sphere, cut off from God. Totally isolated, Yaldabaoth not unnaturally acquired the idea that he was the one and only God. He created a host of demons to serve him – such demons (archons) being immaterial thought-forms or objectified aspects of his own mentality – and arrogantly declared, "I am a jealous God and there is no God but me!"
I was thinking about this recently, how Gnosticism could be understood in a Strong or Weak sense.
Strong Gnosticism, where reality is a prison meant to keep the Divine Spark submerged in corrupted matter seems quite melodramatic, a kind of cosmic conspiracy theory that doesn't seem to align with Survival cases or mystic vision.
But Weak Gnosticism would be akin to a city rife with corruption and callousness, struck through with some charitable acts. And this it seems to me is quite plausible, that reality is awash with spirits that are at best akin to animals or just caught up in their own concerns like most living people largely are. "Gods" bless those who turn to them, though not enough to really make it clear they exist on this side of the Veil.
This also helps make sense of the afterlives that seem to suggest a continual cycle of reincarnation or the afterlife being quite mundane to the point of people having to continue being employed.
What then of the transcendent aspects of mysticism, NDEs, and even some mediumship communication? Are those souls ones who've climbed the ladder of being across incarnations, or just as lucky as those born with talents and/or incredible wealth in this life?
(2020-12-12, 08:31 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I was thinking about this recently, how Gnosticism could be understood in a Strong or Weak sense...
Inferno
Misha Rogov
Quote:The only true freedom that this world has left for us is the freedom of thought and imagination, as well as the freedom to take an ethical and aesthetic position in relation to what happens to us and other sentient beings. And if we look at the world from the point of view of ethics and aesthetics, we will see the inferno. We can happily sing “What a wonderful world!”, but that will not eliminate the laws of wildlife that force some to kill and devour others for the sake of survival and instinctive reproduction, that will not eliminate the excruciating climatic conditions, devastating earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, typhoons, tornadoes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, avalanches, fires, starvation, pain, diseases, epidemics, parasites, dirt, deformities, ugliness, pus, shit, stench and other not really the most wonderful things. Combined with the bloody history of demonic arbitrariness of those of us who rejected the call of conscience, all this may seem wonderful only to a completely blind.
Quote:In the end, we have to ask ourselves why there is a radical contradiction between our freedom and conscience given to us by Transcendence and this infernal world forcibly given to us by some incomprehensible power? Why so many people who had “mystical” (transpersonal) experiences of self-transcending to the Ultimate Realm can recall nothing but absolute Truth, Freedom, Love, and Beauty, whereas in this world there are so many of their terrible opposites? Finally, why many people who had near-death experiences say that what happened to them was like an awakening from a deep and dark sleep to what they perceived as their original state of freedom and authenticity, whereas returning to this world was for them like returning to prison? What is this infernal world and why are we locked in it?
Made me think of this Italo Calvino line:
“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities