Gnosticism & Hermeticism Redux

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

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. 

Double-talking Our Modern Gnostic Age With Miguel Conner And Chris Knowles

This week we are taking the new format out for another spin by welcoming back two popular previous guests, Miguel Conner and Chris Knowles, to double talk the most contemporary of ancient philosophies -Gnosticism- and whether or not we live in the most gnostic of times.

So. Good.

Show Notes:

• Miguel's site and podcast, The God Above God
  
  
• Miguel on Twitter
  
  
• Chris's blog, The Secret Sun
  

The Return of Valentinus and Gnostic Priesthood

In esoteric circles, Valentinus is considered as one of the great mystics and thinkers of early Christian history — even if his Gnostic ideas would later brand him a heretic by the nascent orthodox church. Yet his theologies are gradually being embraced today in the halls of mainstream churches, even by some of the most rigid Catholic orders. We welcome the return of Valentinus, from his transcendent philosophy to his meditative rituals, more needed than ever in a civilization losing hope for meaning and a higher purpose. We also discuss related topics for alternative Christianities of old like sacred theatre, occult sacraments for altered states, shamanistic Gnosis, and much more.

Astral Guest – David Parry, author of Caliban’s Redemption

This is a partial show. For the second half of the interview, please become a member.

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.

Gnosticism in "The Lego Movie"

The big twist, the big reveal, is that the world has been made by Lord Business and he is "the man upstairs." He made this world that is imperfect. He denied anyone's freedom to build what is already inside of them. In his world of supposed order we find nothing but chaos, where in order to maintain order he has had to deny everyone in his world their own creativity, their own divinity. Meanwhile, his son is the actual God that is worth believing in; he is the God that the master builders, the ones who possess the inner knowledge, are fighting for. What else do we see? The fact that to create such a diverse world, the man upstairs is using the ideas that the master builders create, their obvious connection to the real source of creativity in the Lego universe: the real God. It is revealed that the man upstairs is subject to the creative power of the innocent God who lives further upstairs. The man upstairs has created his world in the basement, while the real creative power has been upstairs all along. 

          And what is seen in master builders' contact with the "real" world and its people? It is skepticism of the people's building ability. Is this not the recorded Gnostic's reaction to the Orthodox Christian? We see in both the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Thomas that the Gnostic Jesus laughs at the average Christian's perception of the divine. He laughs at the disciples in the Gospel of Judas for holding communion, saying that they "are not doing this because of your own will but because it is through this that your god [will be] praised" (Judas, Scene One). To the Gnostics, the Orthodox are mistaken in their faith because it is thoroughly of this world. Their god is not worth praise and has brainwashed his creation into believing him and only him. The key to escaping this world is finding that one does not need "the instruction manual" to attain salvation. Rather, one needs to find the Truth that the real man upstairs has instilled within a person. This realization brings salvation, it brings an escape from this world. In The Lego Movie it allows one to enter "Cloud Cuckoo Land."

          This is where Lego shows its cleverness. In Cloud Cuckoo Land there is no questioning anything, no negativity, no unhappiness, and anything that may even potentially turn into negativity is "repressed down deep inside," according to Unikitty. Is this anything other than a critique of the concept of heaven? It would appear at first that Cloud Cuckoo Land provides happiness to its members because it rids them of all the negativity that brings them down. But the truth is much darker. The members of Cloud Cuckoo Land are actually morbidly depressed. There is no happiness in Cloud Cuckoo Land because there is no more freedom there than there is upon the place they escaped from. If freedom is found precisely in one's impotentiality rather than his or her potentiality, then Cloud Cuckoo Land presents a situation where impotentiality is denied as one cannot ever not be not happy. This is manifested as happiness only while one is within Cloud Cuckoo Loud, but as the end of the movie reveals, once again the truth is inside an individual, as Unikitty officially admits to herself that she is unhappy and actually cultivates another's safety because of it.

[Laird]

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

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?

I was thinking about this recently, how Gnosticism could be understood in a Strong or Weak sense...

Inferno

Misha Rogov

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.

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

Lecture 1 - The Other Gospels: 00:00
Lecture 2 - The Perfect Light: 00:23:25
Lecture 3 - Jesus Tricked Everyone: 00:52:03
Lecture 4 - The Alien Man: 01:20:51
Lecture 5 - Archons Rule: 01:49:40
Lecture 6 - Poesis: 02:25:19
Lecture 7 - The Pink Light: 02:55:30
Lecture 8 - Pharmakognosis: 03:27:00

Lecture 1 readings: Unless otherwise mentioned, all readings from W. Barnstone’s necessary collection The Other Bible, now known as The Gnostic Bible (https://amzn.to/2H0QPwv).

• Excerpts from “The Gospel of Thomas” in The Gnostic Bible (verses 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 13, 19, 24, 28, 29, 37, 39, 42, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 61, 62, 70, 777, 89, 91, 108, 113);

• Richard Smoley: “Who Were the Gnostics?”, from his great survey Forbidden Faith (https://amzn.to/2VaVQGu).

• Excerpts from “The Gospel of Philip” in The Gnostic Bible (“Names,” “Rulers,” “Jesus Tricked Everyone,” “The Lost,” “Seeing,” “God is a Man-Eater,” “Leaving the World,” “Joseph and the Wooden Cross,” “Superiority of Chrism to Baptism,” “Laughing Christ,” “Knowledge of Self,” “Slaves and Freedom,” “Root of Evil,” “The Perfect Light”)

Lecture 2 readings:

• Excerpts from “The Gospel of Philip” in The Gnostic Bible, p. 257 (the brief sections called “Names,” “Rulers,” “Jesus Tricked Everyone,” “The Lost,” “Seeing,” “God is a Man-Eater,” “Leaving the World,” “Joseph and the Wooden Cross,” “Superiority of Chrism to Baptism,” “Laughing Christ,” “Knowledge of Self,” “Slaves and Freedom,” “Root of Evil,” “The Perfect Light”)

• Elaine Pagels: “Gnosis: Self-Knowledge as Knowledge of God,” in The Gnostic Gospels, p. 119 (https://amzn.to/2VjB7jX)

Lecture 3 readings:

• “On the Origin of the World” in The Gnostic Bible

• Ioan Couliano: “Interplanetary Tours”, from Out of this World (https://amzn.to/2EtJhR7)

Lecture 4 readings:

• Hans Jonas: “Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40982356...)

• Rene Daumal: “Provocations to Self Denial” (https://amzn.to/2XoYzOm)

Lecture 5 readings:

• Antonin Artaud: “To Have Done with the Judgment of God” (http://surrealism-plays.com/Artaud.html)

• Franz Kafka: selected “Parables” (https://amzn.to/2H2xc71)

• William Burroughs: “Nova Express” (pages 1-8) (https://amzn.to/2XlN1LV)

Lecture 6 readings:

• Harold Bloom: “A Prelude to Gnosis” from Agon (https://amzn.to/2U6BHBe)

• A.R. Ammons: “For Harold Bloom” (https://amzn.to/2VhOzVs)

• June Singer: “The Evolution of the Soul” (https://jungchicago.org/store/index.p...)

• Eric G. Wilson: “The Dark Art” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41402824...)

Lecture 7 readings:

• Philip K. Dick: “The Electric Ant” (http://sickmyduck.narod.ru/pkd077-0.html)

• Philip K. Dick: “How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” (https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to...)

Lecture 8 readings:

• Rene Daumal: “The Determining Memory” (https://amzn.to/2Xfar5A)

• Dale Pendell: “Das Mutterkorn/The Luminosity of Sentient Dimensions” (https://amzn.to/2H0S7rl)

• John Lilly: “Controls Below Human Awareness” (https://amzn.to/2U26MWF)