Gnosticism Series - Part 3: Modern Gnosticism
Consciousness is the Fruit of creation, cultivate it to access your Great Inner Will
Why a Beyond if not as a means of befouling the here-and-now?
— Fredrich Nietzsche
When you know who you truly are, there is an abiding alive sense of peace. You could call it joy because that's what joy is: vibrantly alive peace. It is the joy of knowing yourself as the very life essence before life takes on form.
— Eckhart Tolle
Maybe Gnosticism is the belief in an evil creator God, and the swearing off of all sensual pleasures.
I won’t pretend to have the authority to redefine the word. The world will continue to think of Gnosticism whatever it wants to think of it.
The purpose of THIS part of THIS series, however, is to take the good parts out of Gnosticism and plate them up in a practically useful way.
Let’s get to work saving souls…
SALVATION IS HERE AND NOW
What does it mean for man’s soul to be Saved? Redeemed? These words imply that man’s soul is lost, but then is found; is in danger, but is brought into peace; is faulty in some way, but corrected.
Salvation, Enlightenment, Heaven … these words all mean the same thing: a psychological state of lasting equilibrium, joy, peace, rest, bliss.
Now, how to get there, and how soon can we get there?
Gnostics are derided for claiming it is intellectual knowledge which saves man, when it is in fact Orthodox Christians who place greater weight on the human Intellect as it relates to salvation — they say that man must integrate Belief deeply into his Intellect in order to gain redemption after you die. The Gnostics said, no, it is in fact experience which redeems man’s soul, and it is accessible to everyone while they are alive.
These are starkly different views of salvation, and it is very clear to me which one is not only more appealing, which one makes more logical sense, and which one lines up with my own experiential knowledge.
CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE KEY TO THE KINGDOM
I have described God as the Intelligence within a Seed.
And this Intelligence works through creation to produce a Fruit.
Consciousness is the capstone of the Great Architect’s pyramid, the goal at the end of the arc of evolution, the long-awaited fruit after the seed has germinated and the Tree of Life has grown. Consciousness is the Apotheosis of Creation.
Gnostics believed the Spirit made all things so through its Thought and Mind and Will. They saw Mind as Thought and Perception and Wakefulness and Memory, and Mind is Immaterial, and therefore of the Essence of God. And so the Source expresses itself as Mind in Man — for where else could it come from, or to where else can it go, but Essence to Essence, Light to Light, Immaterial to Immaterial?
Jesus hints at the importance of Awareness / Perception / Consciousness many times, not only in Gnostic but also in Synoptic Gospels. I have shared examples in the previous section. Here are a few more:
“I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I Am!”
— John 8:58
The light of the body is the eye; if your eye is single, the whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, you’ll be full of darkness.
— Matthew 6:22
Live with Christ, who illuminates the mind and the heart. Mind is a lamp which lights up the parts of the soul. You cannot see anything without Light.
— Teachings of Silvanus
Further, it is evident throughout all ancient religious traditions, but especially Gnosticism, how important the dream-world is. Protagonists are constantly receiving visions in dreams. The dream-world is an immaterial realm where our immaterial Soul can travel to and speak with Gods, Spirits, or ancestors. An aware mind becomes lucid in dreams — this is also known as Astral Projection, and it’s what the Gnostics did to receive their visions, indeed it’s a core experience that all mystical traditions talk about. Carl Jung was adamant that “throwing light into the shadow” — i.e. consciously reflecting upon or even participating in one’s unconscious dream-state — was necessary for spiritual fulfillment and union with the inner divine.
This all may sound like shamanistic hocus-pocus, but we have learned through modern science, by the principle of Quantum Entanglement, that all things in the universe are interconnected. At the quantum level, everything is an interconnected field of energy. Our brain filters out 97% of reality, leaving us with a tiny bandwidth of perception limited to our five senses, senses which only detect matter, which is only 3% of the universe. What we think is real is based on a limited, faulty brain. We live in a frequency range dictated by what our body computer can decode, and it is a tiny range. Is it possible that our Inner Self is the last great frontier; that Consciousness opens our Psyche up to brand new dimensions, previously undiscovered except by a select few mystics? Most people go through life without exploring their consciousness at all. But we can and should expand our Consciousness to be aware of more Reality, i.e. to gain experiential knowledge of the Absolute. We only have five senses now, and can only see the light spectrum. But we can develop our Consciousness to be aware of so much more.
The Gnostics warned against the passions of the Flesh, and that man should move his Soul away from Flesh and toward the inner Spirit. This is true but incomplete. We know today how much your body’s chemical processes impact the brain and therefore the Soul / Psyche (I find it very possible that our brains are transceivers of consciousness, like a television’s antenna is a transceiver of invisible electromagnetic waves). Traditional Gnosticism says to avoid gluttony or lust, to discipline the body against addiction or distractions of Flesh, in order to move closer to Spirit; but I personally take it a step further: I practice correct diet and exercise, so that the Soul can use the hormones within the Flesh to help it find the inner Spirit more efficiently. I gain mastery and control of the flesh, on behalf of my Soul, on its search for the Inner Spirit of Eternal Rest. If our brain is a transceiver of Spirit, we can and should hone it in and make the signal even clearer. You should train your body and mind to tap into the energetic network which binds all things in the universe, across dimensions beyond space and time.
Your Consciousness is a part of God like a fruit is a part of a tree. By exercising your Consciousness, by entering states of full wakefulness, by cultivating awareness, you slowly enter a divine state. Your Soul awakens to its Source.
With all the thoughts running through your mind every day — from the moment you get out of bed to the moment you return to it — I doubt your mind is ever truly quiet and centered for more than ten seconds at a time. If you think this is normal or healthy, then I feel very sad for you. By correctly centering Consciousness on the inner self, one finds in his core a peace which begins almost to glow. Centering on the I AM, after thought has turned off, causes relaxing warmth to fill the Soul. It is something very difficult to describe in words, and even more difficult for you to comprehend rationally. I am telling you right now that I am not capable of telling you what it is that you need to know. There is no way for me to describe the state of being when your Intellect has been turned off, and you are simply aware. Unless you meditate regularly, you cannot even comprehend it.
But I am telling you, that if you want experiential knowledge of the divine, that you must start on this path to wakefulness. If you believe that maybe these Gnostics and Theosophists and shamans and oracles and dream-seers were perhaps on to something, that maybe they found God within themselves … then you must attempt to walk this path.
How?
Here is a good quote, from “The Path of Awakening”, according to Gustav Meyrink, which should help:
Be awake in all that you do! Do not think you are already awake. No: you are asleep and dreaming. Be firm, collect yourself, and briefly behold the sensation that runs through your body: “NOW I AM AWAKE!” If you can FEEL this, you will suddenly realize that, in comparison, the state in which you were a few moments ago is like a stupor and sleepiness. This is the first feeble step in a very long journey from slavery to omnipotence. Walk in this fashion from one awakening to the next. There is no pestering thought that you cannot thereby dispel; it is left behind and can no longer reach you. Once you have reached the point where this awakening also permeates your body, sorrows will fall off you like dead leaves. The sacred scriptures of every people on earth: through all of them runs the scarlet thread of the secret doctrine of awakening. On your way to awakening, the first enemy that will bar your path is your own body. It will fight against you till cockcrow. However, if you behold the day of eternal awakening that will pluck you from the sleepwalkers who think themselves men and do not know they are sleeping gods — then even the body’s sleep will vanish and the entire universe will be subject to you, you will be able to perform miracles, without having to wait humbly like a whimpering slave for a cruel God to bestow his grace upon you. It is true, you will no longer know the happiness of a faithful and tail-wagging dog that comes from acknowledging a master above itself, whom it must serve. But ask yourself this question, now that you are a man: would you like to trade places with your own dog?
(Do you think Gustav knew a thing or two about dream-travel?)
And so, the aim is a fully-developed sense of wakefulness. The enemy is dreamless sleep, days without memories, sleepwalking through life. The goal is to exercise the immaterial Mind as thoroughly as possible, by practicing Mindfulness as often as possible. Assuming Jesus and Buddha are both correct when they say The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You, or Enlightenment is achieved in this lifetime, then this of course implies that it is the experience of the inner divine which is the fulfillment of soul, the ultimate goal of life, the holy grail. Mastering our Consciousness / Awareness / Mind is the way to gain that experience. You season beef, set your grill, and cook to temp. You have a science to nourish your body. Just so, meditation transmutes Spirit into your Soul, yet you ignore the science of your inner being.
When standing in line at the grocery store, look around you. Look at all the people. Study their faces, and souls. Feel the motion, the flow. Many people here will stare at their phones. Many will daydream, and they could not tell you the color of the shirt of the person in front of them unless they were asked. They are trapped in their Intellects. They are not aware.
This Daydreamer, this Intellect, this endless cycle of thought… Do you realize how much dopamine you are feeding yourself? Can you imagine how powerful you could become if you turned this cycle off? If you stopped masturbating inside your skull, or via your twitter feed? Quiet the intellect, and the dopamine cycle is starved, and then the chemical energy will divert itself into a new furnace — your Great Inner Will. This is the “chemical wedding” of the alchemists, and the chemical explanation for the phenomenon stated above: a steady diet of the Fruit of the Tree of Life will nourish the God within you. Through Awareness, the Mind becomes quiet, and man comes to hear his Great Inner Will, and manifest God…
EXPOSITION ON THE INNER WILL
"And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally."
— Friedrich Nietzsche
They found the Father in themselves, the Eternal Being, the one who set all in order. Some are not whole, He wants them to know him and love him. What did they lack, if not the knowledge of the father? Having knowledge, that person does the will of him who called.
— Gnostic Gospel of Truth
The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does
— John 5:20
There is a Deep Intelligence within an apple seed. No microscope can see it, no tool can hold it. But this immaterial intelligence is what transforms the seed into a tree that produces fruit. This immaterial intelligence is of the same as the Spirit within man, and it is exactly the same as the Thelemic True Will, the Jungian Instinct, the Nietzschean Great Inner Will … How can it not be? It is the immaterial Will of God which moves matter and man, which is being conditioned out of existence by Modernity and its Authorities, but it is the Source from which Man comes, the Grand Architect. It speaks the Word, and we feel it as Instinct, if only we can quiet our minds to hear it.
Nietzsche was surely not a Gnostic. He would have had a thing or two to say about their tendency to avoid pleasures of the flesh. And yet when it comes to quieting the mind to discover the Divine Inner Will working through him, they would have a lot in common. In Ecce Homo, he writes:
Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages call Inspiration? If not, I will describe it. — If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly with unspeakable certainty and subtlety becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly formed — I never had any choice. … Everything is in the highest degree involuntary, but takes place as if in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity.
He is describing a divine Inner Will speaking to him, through him, where he is just a conduit (“merely mouthpiece, medium”). Inspiration flashes like lightning. The inspired has no choice, the inspiration courses through him, appointed by a divine absolute, yet he feels freedom in it anyways. It is revelation of something already in existence, and one just needs to listen for it (one hears, one does not seek).
And so it is with a Son of God. He only does what he sees his Inner Divinity doing. Having knowledge, the Son does the will of him who called. One hears, one does not ask who speaks.
This Great Inner Will is beyond good and evil — Ego is the source of herd morality, but following this morality against your own True Will is evil in that it creates conflict in your own heart when your actions are not true to yourself. When someone is separated from their instinct, when they are un-whole, when they are asleep, this defies God and results in spiritual pain, and is the only true evil in this world — when you do something because you have been tricked by your Ego or your conditioning or your fear or your laziness. The Great Inner Will has both dark and light qualities, it appears beastly or conquering sometimes, then light and fine other times. And so it is that God is presented as a union of opposites by Gnostics.
Is it so simple to say that one is enlightened if they are a slave to their instincts? A flower is one with its own instincts (how could it not be? It does not have an Intellect or Ego to talk itself out of flowering). So, is it awake, or enlightened? Of course not. What separates man from flower or wolf or monkey is his Awareness / Consciousness. It is possible, without Awareness, to live in tune with Instinct: ancient men like the Northman lived far closer to their True Will than modern man. They were barely more than beasts. Were they all enlightened, and we’ve just been falling further from grace for tens of thousands of years as our intellects developed? Was the Northman a picture of what the highest enlightenment looked like? No more than the flower. These ancient ancestors of ours lived in closer connection to their instinct, yes, and were perhaps happier than us despite their lives being more perilous. But they lacked any true self-knowledge. They were more like Wolves than Man. They lacked Wisdom, Experiential Knowledge, Gnosis. The Knowledge, the Awareness of what you have experienced, is the Enlightenment, the Saving. The Northman becomes the Happy Warrior with Gnosis, instead of mere Bear-Wolf i.e. Beast. The moment when God becomes conscious of himself through a man, the man experiences spiritual bliss for it.
Let me be clear now: the wolf with no awareness who lives in lock-step with his Instinct is a more glorified creature than a man who possesses awareness, but has been corrupted away from his Instinct, is enslaved by his Ego which has been conditioned and over-socialized by society. However, this man, this sleeper, at least possesses the means to free himself and find Grace again. He has Awareness, if only he can tame his Ego and enter it frequently and deeply enough to become Conscious of the divinity within. If he can shake off the Archons keeping him trapped in his psycho-social prison, perhaps he can gain happiness through his Will.
If you discover a treasure trove of gold and gems beneath your garden, the realization of that, the true intellectual understanding, can fundamentally change the nature of your behavior, demeanor, and general sense of happiness in life. An intellectual understanding occurs, yet it is the new state of being, after the Intellect processes reality, which is the positive change. The thinking is not positive — no, the changed awareness after the thought has processed, this is the positive.
That is Gnosis. You discover the trove of gold beneath your garden — the endless warm peace in the core of your being. The sight, the realization, changes everything. You can think about it afterwards, and try to describe it… but just the knowing that you possess it now… this is the altered state of consciousness, the elation, the rest, the joy… This is the Salvation.
CONCLUSION
Gnostics said that the physical world was evil, and that passions of the flesh should be avoided. It says that the God of the Old Testament is the devil. There is no denying any of this. As I said, I am not here to proselytize for Gnosticism. I do not consider myself a Gnostic — the word has been mutilated by history, and one Substack series is not going to revive it.
But there is some very fine meat on its carcass which I have taken away, digested, and transmuted into my own spiritual framework:
They believed heaven was accessible here, now, on earth, via conscious endeavor; not after you die as a condition of your belief and participation in ritual.
They believed that moral authority came from within you, the individual man; not from external Authorities.
They believed that the Highest Spirit existed inside of man; not outside of the universe.
Yes, Gnostics put some strange thoughts on paper, but a) it is less strange after you decode the allegory and b) they put a lot of powerful insights onto the papyrus as well.
Why does any of this matter? Who cares what we call God, how we understand and experience it? It’s a personal thing, let people go on their own path, right?
No.
Our modern civilization is spiritually dead, and it will not be saved except by Men who have regained their Spirit, and have manifested their Inner Will. You will not find lasting happiness in this dim, materially-focused world, you need to find it within, and, only after you have found the light, can you expel darkness and share warmth with others.
Society is a fraud so complete and venal that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence. You have a duty to wake up from its illusion, and then to enlighten others to the Truth: You are the universe experiencing yourself. You are more than your ego, your role in society, your mask. You are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Awaken to your Inner Greatness. Become who you were born to be.
This world needs Joyful Warriors. It needs men connected to their Root Spirit.
Call it Gnosticism. Call it Mysticism. Call it Thelema. Call it Platonism. Call it Theosophy. Call it nothing. Or call it Aionism. Whatever you call it, it doesn’t matter. What matters, beneath the stories, symbols, and names, is the message: Man is in chains, and he must break free. We need to unlearn what civilization has conditioned into our egos, we need to rediscover our Great Inner Wills, we need to practice Presence and Mindfulness when Distraction and Ignorance is causing so much damage to our world.
We need to bring the Spirit out into this world, and we need to do it now.
But first, we need to find the Spirit. We need Gnosis.
He who has ears, let him hear! There is light within a man of light, and he lights the whole world. If he does not shine, there is darkness.
— Gospel of Thomas
Nice essay, thank you for writing and sharing it. It covers a lot of the themes that interest me. The matter/spirit dualism and the Demiurge are concepts that I feel comfortable with (and, to an extent, believe in) based upon intellectual observation of material reality, but I have some hesitation around the concept of "gnosis" -- you wrote in part 1 that "Essence of an Eternal God exists within Man; heaven is a state of rest and joy which man experiences in his mortal lifetime; one achieves this state through experience of the inner divine; this experience is called Gnosis" and "Gnosis is not a rational, propositional, logical understanding, but a knowing acquired by experience." And then in part 3, "I am telling you right now that I am not capable of telling you what it is that you need to know."
Yet how is such experience acquired if there is no specific path or parameters?
Are you defining "gnosis" as simple mindfulness which is practiced via meditation, perhaps via Vipassana (if you get a chance to attend a 10 day silent meditation retreat guided by a recorded S.N. Goenka they are quite interesting)? Or are we to define gnosis as "listening to the voice inside us, as opposed to doing what society tells us to do?" Is it a replacement word or synonym for a man's "purpose" (i.e. a combination of what he is fundamentally good at and interested in, no matter how popular or obscure the topic, perhaps so long as it is not a surrogate activity)? And if we engage with our purpose to the maximum extent we can, it provides soul satisfaction -- regardless of whether or not one "succeeds" -- or to ignore our purpose and feel a continual, nagging sense of dissatisfaction?
As Tolkien said in The Return of the King, p. 190, "It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."
Anyway, the inexactness of the term and its vagueness are stumbling blocks to embracing the term, I think, along with (as you point out) its historical baggage.