The Gnostic World View

 Gnosticism has a bad reputation among ordinary Christians but I believe there are elements of it that can complement conventional religious understanding. I would reject the idea of a Demiurge on a lower level of spiritual reality to the transcendent God who is responsible for the creation of the world with its inbuilt flaws. A basic truth is that God saw Creation and said that it was good. Matter is not evil but it is matter and therefore a more constricted state of being than spirit. The absolute duality of good and evil, spirit and matter, that exists in some versions of Gnosticism, most notably the Manichaean, is also based on a misconception. The world has fallen into darkness but darkness or evil has no separate reality independent of God.

Where I think some Gnostic ideas are useful is regarding the nature of the soul. For the conventional Christian souls are made (as far as I understand the matter) at conception but I think this is nonsense. Souls exist on the spiritual level, in realms of light, and come down to earth to experience life in a body and a sphere of being in which they become separated from God. This is so that they may grow, become independent and, ultimately, if all goes well, return as fully functioning members of the Kingdom of Heaven. John 3:13 says "No man has ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven." Now, I know the verse goes on to say "even the Son of man which is in heaven" and I imagine this is normally understood as a reference to Jesus, but what if it can also refer to men as spiritual beings who incarnate in this world to further their evolution? The seed falls from the tree into the ground from whence it grows up and returns to the sunlight.

The Gnostic idea of man being a divine spark trapped in matter from which it must extricate itself has merit. Where I would differ from Gnosticism is in saying that this is intended. There is purpose behind it. It is not simply that the soul has fallen into darkness and ignorance but that it has come to this state in order to learn and to grow. On its own level it is perfect but passive. Bathed in bliss perhaps, but with no chance to deepen its understanding or develop its creative powers. In order to do this it must come to a world where it is thrown back on itself. This is the world of separation which is the material world.

But things are not quite that simple because this world is not only material, that is to say, outside pure spirit, it has also fallen and so is worse than it might have been. This is where the Gnostic misunderstanding comes in. Yes, the world has been damaged. No, it is not on that account evil. Evil is nothing in itself. It can only inflict harm on good. Good is the reality and evil is just the shadow of reality in a dualistic world of light and darkness. Darkness is not a thing. It is just the absence of light.

So, the soul comes down to earth in order to return to the heavenly realm but as a conscious choice rather than automatically. This act of choosing qualifies the soul to go to a higher level than that from which it emanated but it also means there is an element of risk involved. This is required because the soul needs to form itself by consciously allying itself with God and Creation. God makes the raw material but the soul then has to build itself up from that raw material if it is to be, which is the intention, a real individual hence a potential god itself. 

Gnosticism means knowledge. The soul is required to have spiritual knowledge. That much should be obvious. But which is more important, knowledge or faith? On a spiritual level they are the same thing. It is only in worldly terms that they become separated and sometimes even in conflict. But that just means that they are both very imperfect in this world. The aim is to unite them and realise they are two sides of the same coin.

The One Deadly Sin

 I have been thinking about sin and what it is today because while we still acknowledge most of the traditional sins, pride, greed, lust, envy, anger, sloth and gluttony, we fail to recognise the deadliest sin and this is the one that is more prevalent now than ever.

There are sins of action, robbery, murder, rape and the like, and these we continue to regard as sins though we may not use that word any more. Then there are sins of desire and emotion such as anger and envy and these we often excuse unless they have real world outcomes that lead to crime or violence. And then there are sins of thought and the only ones of these we recognise now are those that go against the ephemeral fashions of the moment and are called racist, sexist, fascist etc. None of those were traditionally regarded as sins unless they included in their make up a real sin, pride or envy, for instance, or else real hatred. However, there is a real sin of thought, a spiritual sin, and this is not only not regarded as a sin but can even be seen as a positive thing, a virtue almost. At worst it has a neutral significance.

This sin is rejection of God. The rejection of God is more than unbelief. Unbelief nowadays is generally a passive thing but rejection is active. It is a deliberate denial of God not simply a lack of belief in him. I would say that even passive unbelief is a sin because God is real and if you are not for him you are against him but it is a sin that can be forgiven, assuming repentance and acceptance, of course. But the fully conscious calculated rejection of God is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and that, so we have been told, cannot be forgiven.

I have labelled this post under free will because that is what all this is about. We are sent to this plane of being because here our innate tendencies can be brought out and this is especially true at the present time which, I would surmise, is why so many souls are alive now. This is a unique testing period in human history. Only those who actively choose to accept God will pass the test.

Time to Stand Apart

 The time has arrived when the full meaning of the saying that "He who is not with me is against me" (Matthew 12:30) has become apparent. There is no more fence sitting. You can no longer simply be a good person or even a spiritual or religious person in a generalised sense for if you are you are likely to be caught up and absorbed by the universal inversion of true spiritual values that is well underway. If you don't consciously see this for what it is and actively stand out against it you will become part of it. Remember that this inversion of values is always presented as a good thing and the acceptance of it the mark of a good person so you do have to make an active stand against the good opinion of the world though without lapsing into egotistic defiance or rebellion for the sake of it. What it does is reverse the hierarchical relationship between spirit and matter, putting the spiritual in a distorted form as existing only insofar as it reflects the requirements and priorities of the material. Good becomes this worldly good only.

We are living at a time when the human sense of individuality has reached a peak. This is at once an opportunity, a test and a real danger. It is a danger in the sense that the consequences of a developed free will mean our choices matter. In the past it may have been spiritually acceptable for our choices to be wrong if the culture in which we lived bent them that way. We were not regarded as so personally responsible because our individual sense of self had not been built up so much. Now we are responsible. The influences of the tribe, the culture, the society are no longer acceptable as extenuating circumstances. This also means that even believing the right thing is insufficient if that belief comes from outside. It must be personal, something we have reached through inner awareness.

I have speculated before that the vastly increased population of the world at the present time may be because many souls are returning to make a definitive choice at a time when that choice will be theirs and not just their culture's. Human evolution has reached the point at which our inner mettle can be tested. The test is made both harder and easier in that religion for most people in the West is no longer the default option. If we are going to believe we must actively develop that belief without the coercion of the past. But then things are also made easier because the results of atheism and materialism are more and more apparent to the unprejudiced mind. God is asking us, "Is this what you want? There is an alternative but you have to seek it out. It won't be given to you ready wrapped as before. If you want it you must look for it but if you do look for it, seriously and sincerely, you will find it."

Dreams of the Future

You have probably heard of experiments in which people are hypnotised and taken back to previous lifetimes they have lived on Earth. They often describe those lives in very compelling terms and sometimes even report on various aspects of life in the past that are only confirmed by subsequent historical research. You can believe or not believe these accounts or you can, like me, hedge your bets and think there might be something in them but they are not necessarily literally true. Either way, they do pose important questions unless you have decided in advance that they cannot possibly be true because human beings only have one life.

Now imagine you could do an experiment in which you hypnotise a large group of people and get them to progress to a future lifetime to report on what might be the state of the world then. A ridiculous fantasy? Perhaps but this has actually been done and the results published in a book called Mass Dreams of the Future written by a psychologist called Chet Snow who was carrying on the work of another psychologist, Dr Helen Wambach. I haven't read the book, which I believe was based on work carried out in the 1980s, but I have read an account of the experiment and it raises some interesting points.

First of all, we have to ask if the future is fixed. Common sense rebels against this as do one's innermost feelings. The universe is not a machine and anyone with an ounce of spiritual sensibility must acknowledge free will. No free will means no humanity, it's as simple as that. Therefore, the most logical thing is to see the future as something like a cloud of potential which will coalesce into a particular hard reality according to individual human decisions plus the acts, thoughts and behavioural patterns of other forms of life. The future cannot be predicted with precision, though the nearer one gets to it, the more it can be, but various possibilities can be predicated. They are there on a mental level in an inchoate form and the one that solidifies in the physical world is determined by what goes on in the present. I suspect that very advanced forms of life can foresee the future up to a point but I think it unlikely that the actual future has happened on any level before it really does happen. Yes, it will be there in the mental world but it is not fully realised until it takes physical reality and until it does do that it is subject to change and alteration. It's rather like an idea taking shape in your mind before you write it down. That idea arises in the thought world but the form it takes in the physical world can be adjusted right up to the moment it takes form.

It seems that 2,500 people took part in the future lifetime experiment and when their reports of the future were studied it was found that they contained several points of divergence but also some of agreement. Most significant of the latter was that virtually every one of them said that the earth's population had decreased dramatically. It had become considerably smaller than it was at the time (this was in the 1980s, remember). No future date seems to have been given, at least not in the account that I read, but it is safe to assume that the future envisaged has not yet arrived. I think it represents a new age or cycle and we are still living at the tail end of the old one.

The disagreements were over what sort of future we can expect. They split into four categories which were as follows. One was a sterile, technological world of space stations and synthetic food. Another was the exact opposite, a return to nature kind of existence in which people lived in harmony with the natural world and pursued spiritual development. A third was a science-fictiony mechanical world of underground cities and artificial environments enclosed in domes. And the fourth was a post-apocalyptic world of small groups of survivors eking out a living as best they could in the shattered remains of a destroyed civilisation. Futures 1 and 3 were described as 'bleak' and 'joyless'. Future 4 doesn't seem much better. Future 2 seems the best option.

The question is how much of this comes from ideas about the future already existing in the subjects' minds at the time? Quite a lot, I would say. These scenarios are all well known and were in the '80s too, and individuals may have subconsciously picked the one they were most in sympathy with. On the other hand, you cannot rule out the possibility that all these scenarios do exist as potential futures and the real one is yet to be determined. Nor can you rule out the possibility that the actual future is none of these. We can envisage these types of existence now but no one in the 16th century could have envisaged the world as it is today in the 21st. What I do find convincing is the point of agreement about the reduction in population. I think we all know that the situation cannot continue as it is and already, although world population is increasing, the birth rate is dropping in many parts of the developed world. That not withstanding, my feeling is that a great number of souls are being gathered together today to experience a critical time in earthly development but when that phase has worked itself out there will be a return to a lower level of population.

Perhaps these hypnotised subjects tuned into the psychic plane in which the future is gestating but if they did so they did it from the point of late 20th century humans which is to say they were only able to bring through what they could comprehend within the limited framework of their own minds and so they interpreted what they saw according to their own understanding. They didn't see reality (if they saw anything, of course, and it wasn't just fantasy), they saw symbols and patterns which they then formed into images based on what they already knew. So there was an element of projection there. And even within these limitations what they saw were potential futures not actual ones. The 30 plus years since the experiment will have changed much.

The future is a cloud that is taking shape. At a certain point one can detect several patterns in this cloud but the final one in which, so to speak, the cloud descends to earth and takes a concrete form cannot be known until it does that. That is why both free will and destiny are true. Just like you and me, the world has a destiny. It was set up from outside by God and his helpers to go through a certain pattern of development but that pattern is constantly modified from the inside by us.

I don't believe these people saw the future. Given they all saw different futures that's hardly surprising. But they may have tuned into a level of reality in which possible outcomes are beginning to form as mental images. The one that actualises could be any one of these or even something quite different if new information enters the field. What we think and do now determines the future or certainly has an impact on it. This is why one should never give up but always strive for the best.

Personal Discernment and Authority

 It's not either/or. It's both/and. We would be foolish to reject the wisdom of tradition but we have to make that wisdom our own and that means we must bring a personal approach to it. There is also the important point that in the modern world things have changed. We have crossed a threshold and are now required, yes, required, to find truth within ourselves rather than simply take it from an external source, however august that source might be, however authoritative.

If I had been born in Saudi Arabia 100 years ago I would no doubt have been a fervent Muslim. If I had been born to a Brahmin family in 18th century India I would have been a Hindu of some kind, pledging my spiritual allegiance to Vishnu or Siva. If a Roman Catholic today who lives his life according to the rules of the Church and believes what the Church decrees had been born in Tibet he would almost certainly have been a Buddhist. That should give us pause for thought. This is the same soul born in a different time and place and believing something totally different according to the milieu in which he had grown up. Unless you consider this impossible. But if you do it seems to me you are putting material things before spiritual ones for you are determining the soul by the body and its outer circumstances. Certainly the soul is qualified by these things but it is not formed by them or bound to them.

Personal discernment can be faulty but the fact that it is not perfect in this world is no reason not to strive to develop it or be guided by it. It should have its checks and balances and tradition and authority can help in this regard. They can also give it the impetus it needs to start it off and set it in the right direction. But they are not perfect either. Besides, do you think God wants obedient servants or co-creators who can work with him to expand and glorify creation? Asking the question gives the answer. If he wanted the former he would not have put us in this world which is specifically designed to foster the development of free will.

In a way that is what all this comes down to. Free will is not just a matter of making the right choice. That is just the beginning, necessary but not sufficient. It really has to do with making gods out of men. If that is to happen these men cannot just be followers. They must be captains of their own ships, able to navigate anywhere in the creation they want to go though always, of course, according to the laws of God not their own whims and personal preferences or they will capsize and sink.

One of the arguments against personal discernment is that it can be unreliable. At this stage of our development that is quite true. But two points need to be made. The fastest sprinter had to learn to walk at one time. If he hadn't done that, and probably fallen over on a few occasions, he would never have become a sprinter. We are at an early stage of inner discernment. We will make mistakes but we will learn from them. God will guide us back to the true path if our motivation is right. If it's not right, that is a different story and then we need to get it right.

The second point is this. Do you think tradition is perfect and, even more, complete? It is not. It may be enough for salvation (though it may not nowadays for this is a different world to that of the past and has its own demands) but it is not enough for theosis which requires full personal and spiritual responsibility.

The question then arises what if discernment and authority clash? Which bows to which? I would say you have to use discernment to decide this question which perhaps answers it. But what use is discernment if you reject it when it differs from authority? If it merely confirms authority and tradition it is obviously just conditioned by them and not personal at all. If it is perversely different then it is too personal and not rooted in spiritual awareness as it should be. Generally, discernment will add to and develop tradition and cast it in the light of here and now. Without it tradition and authority become ossified.

I Am An Individual

 Did you know that English is the only language in which the 1st person singular pronoun is capitalised? I only learned this recently and haven't confirmed it but, according to my limited knowledge of other languages (je, ich, yo, io, ego), it appears to be true. It undoubtedly has some significance, reinforced by the fact that the letter 'I' is like the numeral 1.

The significance, as I see it, is that the English-speaking peoples were those who were most conscious of themselves as individuals and, by extension, most concerned with personal liberty. These are actually highly spiritual matters because individuality is what makes a created being start to become a god in its own right and the sense of personal liberty is what gives a material being release from the control of matter into the freedom of spirit. This is why the Creator created, to make, to put it somewhat naively, friends and companions as opposed to mindless slaves.

Now, the process can go wrong. If individuality becomes important for its own sake and seeks to serve itself rather than God it has, so to speak, gone bad. But if it aligns itself with the creative purpose of the universe and seeks harmonious interaction with other individuals, it is carrying out God's will and furthering its own spiritual fulfilment.

By this line of thinking it would be no accident that English became a kind of universal language in the 19th and 20th centuries and continues to be so. The gift of individuality, hitherto present but relatively undeveloped, spread throughout all the nations of the world. This was a major step forward in human evolution. Now what is needed is for this individual sense of self to connect with the greater Self of the universe. Having become conscious of itself it needs to learn to go beyond itself but it could not do this without first knowing itself. It is the sense of separation that allows for fully conscious union.

I is the basic reality if the universe. It is how God would describe himself. I, the 1 without a second. It is what consciousness reduces to. The eternal subject. God's great gift to his creation was to bestow his supreme sense of self on us human beings so that we could become like him. This is what being made in his image means and it is an idea expressed in English more fully than in any other language. This was the task of the English speaking peoples, to give the world a full sense of what it is to be an individual.

God and Free Will

 There are certain questions of a theological nature that I and others in my small circle of fellow bloggers disagree on. For instance, reincarnation which I believe in though I do not say that it necessarily applies to everyone. It is quite possible that different means of growth are used for different groups of souls. Speaking for myself, I am glad these disagreements exist as they make me think. They open up areas that I may not have considered sufficiently before and make me look at areas I have considered afresh. Who wants to be stuck in an echo chamber with no chance of growth or development? Not me. On the other hand, we do share basic principles such as the belief in God, in Jesus Christ as saviour, the  need to see the world as a creation which has opportunities for spiritual growth and the reality of evil which operates in a particularly devious way at the present time. That also is important. We may differ in externals but agree on fundamentals.

One of the differences which has been explored recently in posts by Bruce Charlton here and here and by William James Tychonievich here is to do with the apparent conflict between an omnipotent God and the reality of free will. If you have not already done so you will have to read their pieces to get the full extent of their thoughts on this but a crude summing up would be how can what God creates go against God? Or if God is both omnipotent and good how does evil arise? These are important questions and cannot be ignored by any spiritually concerned person. Well, perhaps they can as a simple sincere childlike faith is enough to get anyone to heaven but a thoughtful person will want to consider them.

I personally see no conflict on the spiritual level between God being the author of everything and us having complete free will. I don't see why God, that's God as God and not some kind of demiurge within an already existing reality, cannot create lots of potential little gods out of himself which then, to become actual gods, have to develop themselves which they do through their experiences in the various worlds of being and becoming, worlds of choice, of duality, of testing and of self-expression. Christians say God creates out of nothing and as he is God he can do that. That's what being God means. He is both a spiritual being and spiritual being itself, the personal Creator but also unmanifest reality. I would put this in a slightly different way and say that God creates out of himself. So, we are created out of God and in his image which means with free will. The possibility of evil arises because otherwise we would not be able voluntarily to turn to the good. That still does not answer why beings should turn to evil or why they should oppose God and creation but if free will really is free then this is always a possibility. The created want to be the creator. The fact of a free self might make some look for freedom outside God instead of within him though that just means they have become the slaves of their own egos. The doctrine of the Fall helps explain why evil arose in human terms and why both this world and human nature were corrupted to the extent that it needed the Incarnation to help put them right. However, I accept that the mystery of evil is not solved by this. It is simply pushed back into the spiritual world where first  it appeared. Consequently, we could surmise that evil is the unfortunate corollary of freedom and perhaps also of love.

As for why God does not directly create the perfect gods he wants us to become without taking the risk that we might go bad, the answer surely is that if he did that then we wouldn't be gods in our own right. We would just be clones of him. We effectively have to make ourselves gods from the raw material he gives us. You might say that if this raw material comes from him it should be him and so should not have the capacity for evil or to go wrong but that is to misunderstand the very nature of free will. If it really is free then it will have the capacity to go wrong. The idea of evil is built into the possibility of knowing the good. 

I must admit that I am constructing arguments here that support my intuitions and it is they that come first. My intuition is that God is the One without a second and that all things in heaven and earth derive from him. But free will is fundamental too. These are just basic principles for me and I am not particularly bothered if there are difficulties in reconciling them as long as there are not glaring disparities and I don't think there are.