Be wary of gnostic thinking.
(media.greatawakening.win)
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You may be right that it's an incorrect interpretation, I'm just learning about gnosticism in the past few days and the interpretation I was presented with is that God split himself infinite > finite (present in man) and man can eventually become God through gnosis. Also the demiurge was presented as an antagonistic architect which placed us in fleshy prisons to suffer.
Ok cool.
Kinda, yeah, but not really depending on which school of thought you subscribe to. Now I see your point about 'homo deus'. My interpretation or personal understanding that rectifies this would be to say rather than becoming God, the goal is to realise the connection and the achieve a sort of union with God. Not that you yourself become god, but rather you recognise the divine 'spark' within you and know that you are a tiny piece of the whole that is God.
This isn't really a good explanation either and I do actually see you point more and more as I'm trying to avoid the issue.
Put it this way. I've known many people that became part of the psychedelic music and drug subculture. Without going into that too much, I am familiar with psychedelic experience as it relates to mystical and religious experiences. Many of the people that have a mystical experience end up with that interpretation, that they themselves are God. It's a kind of Solipsism. It's an extremely arrogant thing. It seems they take a short-cut towards something they haven't put in the time to study, and draw incorrect conclusions.
I'm a little bit tired and I'm struggling here, it's been a while. Consider this idea. Imagine concentric rings, smaller ones inside larger, expanding out infinitely or to whatever arbitrary point. My understanding of Gnosis is a state in which your mind is stilled sufficiently that you become supremely centred, within your heart of hearts or consciousness. The centre being the centre of the small concentric circle. That's little old 'you'. It shares it's centre with the heart of all creation. This is something within everyone but also outside and expanding to ever greater levels, whence my analogy of the concentric circles. The infinitely large circle if you can imagine such a thing would be the totality of everything or God. So you don't 'become' that, in a sense, but you can connect to the heart of it, the centre of it all that exists within you.
You could also argue that God wouldn't be the infinitely large circle but also whatever exists outside of it, if there could be such a thing. The boundary of the circle and analogy breaks down at that point and it doesn't really matter in any case.
yes so this is one idea, there are many and it gets super complicated. As to whether the demiurge is something to hate and reject or to accept as a smaller part of the larger totality that is god... there's a lot to it, It gets really hectic
As with all things 'occult' in nature, there are two paths. The Gnosis or mystic state that I described would be the 'right hand path', I suppose, of making your ego small and being humbled before an almighty, infinite God of which you are less than a grain of sand. The other path would be inflating your ego to the point that it becomes the whole. That might be what people are interpreting as Gnosticism, but like I say, it depends on the school of thought.
We are in a unique position as humans. We aren't so lowly as a bug or bacteria, we are capable of reason and self reflection. We also aren't so mighty that we are tempted to think of ourselves as gods, most of the time anyway. It's a unique middle sort of position in the scale of things. I think there is something in Buddhist thought about this.
Thanks I appreciate your writeup and explanation. I'm planning on reading literature on the subject next, (to fan out my knowledge from the single source I've so far discovered)
I can see how the left/right hand path works into this to twist gnosticism in two different ways.
yes, good on you, thankyou. I think you see my point anyway, that's basically what I was trying to say. There's a whole fascinating cosmology that different gnostic schools cooked up. There are several different branches of Christian Gnosticism and there are also things like Hermeticism. Hermeticism is kind of the root of all western occult schools, expanded upon by many others later including Crowley
My personal opinion is that the Cabal, through their occult knowledge, has a grasp of this stuff, and either willingly or unwillingly worships and draws power from what could be considered the demiurge. It's essentially the same as thing as 'Satan' or Satanism. It's also essentially the left hand path of ego worship or seeing yourself as becoming God. These 2 things are slightly separate yet related and I waver back and forth between what I believe it is that THEY believe.
This was primarily what I was thinking as well. You can really see the prevalence of that school of thought in the Trans ideology. The idea that the doctor "assigns" your sex/gender at birth rather than making an objective observation based on your primary sex characteristics therefore trapping you in a socially constructed wrong body that doesn't match your soul sounds very demiurgic at least to me.
Valentinianism might be a interesting place to start. The cosmology is pretty complex but also interesting if you have the mind to bother with it. Not saying that I personally subscribe to it, just that it gives you a good idea how fleshed out one of the Christian Gnostic schools can be.
What's also interesting, The Lord of the Rings lore includes a creation tale in the Silmarillion. J. R. R. Tolkien was a Catholic but he cooked up a really interesting cosmology and creation story that is part biblical retelling, but with a sort of Gnostic flare. The idea of sound or vibration and different harmonies sung by the Ainur to shape the universe of creation. That in itself isn't really a gnostic idea but it's pretty cool none the less.
Nothing like a person with a little fresh information- probably from one source, who then throws all such sources into the same bag and condemns it. Keep studying and researching until you have had a little more experience with the subject, little hopper.
Appreciate the patronization. I fully intend to.
I am sorry dear, you were literally begging for it- like going off half cocked after the first day of school. It is a huge subject category with many facets and conflicting ideas and interpretations. The key is to only want the knowledge (gnosis) to be informed and do good, not to use it for personal gain or power.