The Gnostic faith.

transcendpolarisation.webs.com...

The purpose of Jesus wasn't to create some label that everyone would attach themselves to, it was about rediscovering who you were before you entered your body. That is the thing that has been removed out of Christianity in favour of institution religion.

reply to post by MayorOfCydonia


ABSOLUTELY, COMPLETELY, AND ULTIMATELY CORRECT!!!!!

You sir, win the prize. Once someone starts "following themselves", the philosophy has been corrupted.

>>>cough>cough

You are exactly right.

It is so ironic how "Christian's" today are the Pharisee's of old!

They do not even know Jesus Christ.

I do believe that the things that Jesus (if he was even real) said would be quite different than what is so to say.."preached" nowadays. I read somewhere in one of the Apocrypha's or maybe it wasn't that Jesus said "If you want to see God, go look into a still pond". I believe that the church wanted to distort the sayings and teachings of Jesus to their liking to have a more dogmatic control over society. lay out a certain set of beliefs and rules....follow them or burn in hell for eternity.

I believe Jesus was a great man* and that there were many like him through history that preached the same message. Honestly, i think Jesus would be rolling in his grave if he saw what happened to the people that listened to him.

Constantine was the monster behind the removal of the Gnostic teachings in the Bible I believe. He and his group of 'editors' succeeded in creating possibly the most destructive book in history from what many believe to be the greatest book ever written (the Bibles' removed books)

What people forget is that Gnosticism had to be lost in order to be saved.

If the truth were easy to find, it would be devalued in exactly the way the so-called "Christian Faith" has been perverted, watered down, and desecrated. The masses can't be saved. They're not meant to be saved.

Finding one's way through the world is supposed to be difficult. It is supposed to be prohibitively painful. It is meant to be sufficiently gruesome and exhausting as to dissuade weak willed, knock-kneed querents. It's no accident.

Originally posted by MayorOfCydonia
transcendpolarisation.webs.com...

The purpose of Jesus wasn't to create some label that everyone would attach themselves to, it was about rediscovering who you were before you entered your body. That is the thing that has been removed out of Christianity in favour of institution religion.

Sounds a lot like Islam....

But don't Gnostics also believe that we are a part of God? And that everything is a part of God?

[edit on 10-4-2010 by denialofignoranceattack]

Originally posted by denialofignoranceattack

But don't Gnostics also believe that we are a part of God? And that everything is a part of God?

Most Gnostics believe that the Sacred Flame, a manifestation or emanation of the Divine, is inherent in all living things.

reply to post by MayorOfCydonia


Exactly.

Most of the problem with modern Christianity is that it grew out of the cult of Paul, where Jesus was held up as someone to be worshipped instead of someone to lead and teach.

I think He would be upset and saddened to see so many people treating others badly in His name, and not even paying attention to His message, which is the same as all the other great teachers of history.

We are more than our physical selves.

Our souls are immortal.

The most important thing we can do is to love others.

reply to post by emsed1


I agree with you and even extend this notion to hypocrisy within Christianity about "Love". I thought the teachings of Jesus said to even hate your enemies but yet i see complete hate, disgust, and violent attitude toward anyone who is not Christian (not applying to all Christians obviously). They see themselves as more elitist and higher than anyone else. I also find it agitating when you say something that they do not like and they reply "well i pray for you that Jesus will show you the way" as if they belittle you.

*steps off soap box*

Jesus is someone to emulate.

If I recall correctly most forms of Gnosticism are founded on a radical dualism that asserts that the material world is entirely evil, a black iron vault (a couple of thousand years prior to PKD popularising the term), created by the demiurge that enslaves the sacred, divine spark that resides in man. Gnosticism is also largely predicated on the Hermetic philosophy attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, and almost all esoteric disciplines involving magical practice, astrology, etc, are an intrinsic element to Gnosticism.
I love the beauty present in Gnostic writings, but they mostly represent primitive existential angst to me and I'm not one to believe that the world, and the universe, is an abortion or a flawed construct of an evil God. The world is not inherently evil to my mind.
And there is so often a vague dividing line between orthodox Christian thought and heterodox thought such as Gnosticism. The Book of John contains many elements congruent with Gnostic writings and much of the Bible is heir to the same Zoroastrian radical dualism as the Gnostics.

I had to do a double-take = double-think when i read Gnostic 'Faith'...
because i look at the Gnostic concept as more of a "worldview"
as opposed to a belief system or faith

but good thread in any case

reply to post by Extant Taxon


most of what was written about the gnostics comes from translaters who either rewrote the original christian attacks against them, or the translations of the nag hammadi documents based on the idea that they are an early form of the new testament.

the gnostics never felt the world was evil- yet did say it arose from a mistake- continued in our own perception of it- thus the need to correct our own perception. the body was not evil, but a divine package that could be used to reach truth-
they used many aspets of tantric sexuality, perception and altered consciousness to go beyond the body but not to deny it

the words Jesus or Christ never appear in the text. these are translations made by those translating the document. usually the words IS appears or the word XRS. these are cryptic mystical names, not meant to be names that appear in the new testament

XRS was the inner guide- or you might say the christ wisdom within
and IS is the male counterpart energy of the universe to Sophia
thus they are universal concepts not actual human people as such

-once you can read the words as they were written and without modern ideas, then the nag hammadi documents begin to open a wealth of pure information- at times pure zen, at times taoist, and at times like reading a castaneda novel.

reply to post by Hermes8


As far as I'm aware the team of scholars that produced the modern translation of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures I use were fully aware of what they were analysing, over a period of decades, and it's importance and relevance theologically, translating it with care and attention. It doesn't seem much different in meaning than any other I have seen. Certain factions merely want to pretend that heterodox systems of thought such as Gnosticism are totally divorced from orthodoxy.
This is not the case it seems.

Anyway, what translation of the Nag Hammadi library do you call authentic?

This thread reminds me of something I read recently in The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley. In the passage, he basically says that "Christians" who vigorously attempt to defend a compulsory belief system are completely missing the point and calls this mainstream version of Christianity a "lawyer's fantasy". I thought that was an interesting way of putting it.

Originally posted by Rock Lobster
This thread reminds me of something I read recently in The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley. In the passage, he basically says that "Christians" who vigorously attempt to defend a compulsory belief system are completely missing the point and calls this mainstream version of Christianity a "lawyer's fantasy". I thought that was an interesting way of putting it.

It's a good way of putting it, especially if it refers to any institution that asserts its primacy as the only sanctioned arbiter of any version of Christianity. The Bible, even the watered down authorized version in use today, is much more interesting, more often subversive and dangerous than such institutions would admit.