Gnosticism: knowing from the inside. (Jacob Slavenburg is a Dutch cultural historian and friend, who has gained fame through his books on early Christian movements, written from a modern esoteric philosophy.)
Preface: Now something completely different, less political, more spiritual, although everything is connected, also politic and spirituality should be more connected with each other. It is important to know, it has to do with the other and everything is interconnected. I try to translate as good as possible because knowledge evolved. (Peter van Els)
Gnosticism: knowing from the inside.
Gnosticism is the Greek word for knowledge, understanding. No outward (cognitive) knowledge, but knowing from within. In that sense gnosticism is as old as mankind. From his origin man is accompanied by the gnostic, although he was aware that less and less in the continuing evolution.
Until recently we knew not much more of Christian gnostic variant than the negative comments about the Church Fathers. Since a drastic change came when a bottle was discovered in 1945 in the Egyptian city of Nag Hammadi with over fifty writings how were Gnostic, or at least can be interpreted Gnostic sense. We had now writings of the Gnostics called themselves!
Gradually begins to penetrate the value of these writings in Western science, especially in theology. Outside researchers with an open mind, however, there are still very many who make every effort to downplay the value of these texts. That is understandable because it requires a totally different way of thinking and awareness than what these theologians were raised with.
Gnostic is not a philosophy, but an experience.
Gnostic is not a goal but a way.
Gnostic brings man to himself and from there to the world.
Gnostic is the experience of intense and indissoluble bond with the AL (all that is).
Through knowledge of their own soul-core man has gnostic of the origin of the soul core, of pneuma (Spirit). Spirit see many Gnostics as a better word than God, because that concept has already undergone so much defilement of the human (read: male) projected thinking. In the Gospel of Philip, a text from the Nag Hammadi jar, we read:
God created man
and people created themselves a god.
So it goes in the world:
people create themselves gods
and worship their creations.
Truly! (So) the gods
the people must worship!
The Christian Church, God has declared a person, the substantially different. In doing so, they put God out of man. A regrettable loss.
By contrast, New Age emphasizes the immanent God. Every human has a divine core. The man himself is deeply God. That seems pure profit. But the immanence of God without a connection to the transcendence leads to a fatal demarcation of God to no more than one's own consciousness at that time.
Spirit (or God) is the all-encompassing in all present. It is the mind (Greek: nous) of the Spirit that the man Jesus shone at his baptism in the Jordan. When he became Christos (Greek anointed - of Light). The divine Logos (the comprehensive understanding, comprehension, usually translated as: Word) manifested in flesh and blood. Man Jesus Christ (the consciousness of Spirit) into the fabric.
The Christian church has Jesus and Christ merged as a person with God and later with Holy Spirit. Jesus has been far-theological. Christ has been placed outside the human being. So the man is of God 'loose'.
The discovery of the Christ-being in one's own heart is the immediate access to the Kingdom. A kingdom which Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas (also from the Nag Hammadi jar) says it is spread over the earth but by the people, is not seen. The Church has the kingdom to a distant place transposed (another heaven) and a distant time (the end).
Gnostic establishes a link between the transcendence and the immanence of God, Christ and the Kingdom.
God, creation and man are together in an inseparable whole.
Everything is permeated Spirit. In the Gospel of Thomas we read:
Jesus said:
I am the light which is above all.
I'm AL.
As AL it emerged from me and
AL came to me.
Divide a piece of wood and I am there,
lift up a stone and you will find me there.
Gnostic is the experience of Jesus as the driving force that the man pointing the way to the birth of Christ in one's heart - in the Gospel of Philip, we read that the man then no longer only a Christian, but unto Christ come-, Christ-force is by no means universal and goodness only reserved (so-called) Christians. Other cultures give a different name to this force. However, the substantial experience is the same. It is the experience of rebirth, of resurrection, of transformation, of redemption.
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