True Gnostics Should Not Vote For ...

I happened across a comment online the other day where some person was saying that no true Gnostic should vote for McCain. I had to laugh.

This is the same rhetoric I could hear back in the Southern Baptist Church. "Thou shalt not vote for Obama." For most exoteric religions, I can see how members of their assemblies like being told what to think, who to vote for, how to live, what products to buy, what products "true believers" shouldn't buy, etc.

But to hear a self-proclaimed Gnostic start saying that "true Gnostics" can only vote one way or another truly bugs me. It seems that any religious movement is capable of developing these "fundamentalists," who are essentially people who think the world should revolve around what they believe, think, and feel. In short, this is obviously a person who hasn't learned that the true self is not the ego, not the consciousness, and not the physical body. The true self transcends all of this.

To wrap your spirituality around anything else is a practice in futility. Is that to say that I don't believe true Gnostics should vote? ... Well, that's the wrong question. I don't force my journey towards gnosis on anyone else. I would never say a "true Gnostic" does anything but follow the urging of their spirit. Your journey is not my journey, even if our destination is the same.

If you want to focus your energies on making the Black Iron Prison of this reality more comfortable for you or for others, go for it. Political beliefs, social efforts, environmental causes -- none of these accelerates your spiritual journey. As I've said before, good and proper actions in this life are offspring of your spiritual awakening, but they are not the ends to your means.

Whether your support is for the Democrats or the Republicans, the two parties with which most people align themselves, you're feeding a Black Iron Prison of some sort. Democrats want a big centralized government. Republicans want smaller, more local governments. Democrats want to put the government in charge of as much of your life as possible, because you can't be left to make decisions like charity, health care, and how you spend your money on your own. Republicans claim to want to leave that power in your hands, but then they build a large military and intelligence complex to restrict your rights just as much. Even the Libertarians would leave many of the decisions in the hands of big corporations.

So, who's right? you may be wondering. None of them are right, and all of them are right. But in the end, none of it matters. We are transients in this life. None of this will matter in 500 years or 1000 years. In 2000 years, almost everything of our society and the societies around the world will be gone. Will you spend your short while on this Earth focused on transient matters, or will you focus on returning to the Fullness? Will you force your beliefs on other people, or will you discover and elevate your true Self?

The choice is yours, by all means. I, for one, choose something more permanent.

"Why?" is the Devil's Question

I was chatting with a friend this past week, and I was being immature (as usual) and began asking "Why?" as he was explaining something to me. I really didn't want to know why, but I wanted to test him to see if he knew why. After a couple of times, he said, "Why? is the Devil's question."

I said, "I beg your pardon? Did you just say 'Why? is the Devil's question?'"

He said that he had, and I asked, "Who told you that?"

"My priest," he said bluntly. "Why?" apparently caused Lucifer to rebel against the Most High, and "why?" opens us up to being faithless, according to his priest.

As a Gnostic, I was tempted to correct him, but also as someone who can respect another person's faith if it fulfills them, I let it slide. But the statement has stuck with me since, and it bugs me -- because it is both very wrong and right at the same time.

Initially, I was shocked by the statement. Not asking "why?" helped keep people in submission to a corrupt Church throughout the Middle Ages and led them to keep paying indulgences, even though there is no biblical proof of anyone's ability to purchase a loved ones' salvation. Not asking "why?" led the Church into a destructive acquiescence to the Third Reich in World War II. And in modern times in America, not asking "why?" has opened 13-year-old girls up to disturbing misogynistic, and polygamist marriages to 50+-year-old pedophiles in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS).

The question "why?" allows us to use the minds that we've been given. If God is the Creator (which Gnostics don't necessarily believe, but orthodox Christians do), then shouldn't we use the minds He gave us? Or is this a "have faith in the Creator, not the creation" debate?

At the same time, there is a tendency for people to get hung up on asking the question rather than listening for an answer. Their minds and spirits are acting in the same immature way I was with my friend, asking, "Why? Why? Why?" If the spirit and mind are focused only on the question, then the answer may never come. Asking "why?" can become the habit, rather than something more productive, like listening.

The act of falling into a silent state of being is what Centering Prayer, a practice I use, is about. The practitioner sits comfortably with the back straight and their eyes closed. And rather than reciting a sutra or prayer, they just let their minds relax. There is no forcing of the mind to be blank -- if thoughts arise, the practitioner lets the thoughts occur without becoming attached to them. Divine revelation isn't the point either. The point is simply to listen by being silent. If the person finds themselves becoming attached to a thought or emotion, they can simply recite their sacred word (like "Abba" or "Peace" or "Trust") to return their mind to the task at hand.

By falling into silence and not necessarily expecting anything in return for our 20 minutes of time, we break the self-centered habit of always having to have our minds move at a million miles per hour. We're a vain society, and we love to think we're showing our importance by having our minds multi-task. It is so odd to us to think that our eventual evolution may actually involve embracing silence, not talking or texting or fitting as much stuff into our days as possible.

I run into many people who call themselves agnostics (more now than ever before). They don't want to say that they're atheists, because they don't want to shut off the possibility that there is something beyond this mundane existence. But they also don't want to know the answer, if there is one. They're stuck at the stage of asking "why?," and they have no desire to move any further. To go further requires sacrifices that they're unwilling to make (time, effort, ... noise).

To question the existence of a higher power is chic and hip -- it shows, so they think, that they're intelligentsia. They think like Obama thinks -- faith (and guns) are for the desperate. Those are niceties to cling to when all else fails. To ask the question "why?" in pop culture makes you sound really cool and intelligent in conversations, but no one expects the answer to the question ... they don't want it, in fact.

So, in a sense, "Why?" is the Devil's question. But so is not asking it. The Archon can keep you in submission if you follow either path exclusively. His control over the human race is found in the extremes of both choices. Gnosis, on the other hand, is found when you ask the question, and then silence your mind and actually listen for the answer.

New Rules for the Untransformed Masses

This morning, Reuters released a story about the Vatican considering the need for the Church to provide guidance in the area of "bioethics," in the wake of modern-day theories about Global Warming. Top on their list is the potential for penance to be given to someone who has blighted the Earth and its environment in one way or another.

While the Church has generally focused its attention in this area on genetic manipulation and stem cell research, they are now focusing on protecting the environment, considering it a modern sin to commit ecological offenses.

As a Gnostic, I see this as another example of how orthodox and mainstream religions have gotten it wrong. A church doesn't fulfill its purpose by outlining and updating sins as the times change. Rules and commandments are imposed to try to modify outward behavior. The purpose of any spiritual pursuit shouldn't be to modify behavior; it should be to transform the spirit of the practitioner.

It is against the very nature of a transformed and enlightened spirit to commit murder, to envy your neighbor, to steal from another person, or to destroy its own environment. Gnostics are often called antinomian (anti = against, nomos= law) for this very reason. They see that it is not the rules of behavior that transform a person, but it is the essence of the spirit that guides a person's actions.

The perfect Biblical examples of this truth are the Pharisees. These were men who were very concerned with following every letter of Mosaic law, and they were deeply offended by the actions of the Christos, who spoke against them and performed miracles on the Sabbath (God forbid!). These men were pure according to the ruling authorities, and yet they held malice and contempt in their heart for people who weren't like them. Following the rules did not transform their hearts.

In the Gospel of Thomas, when his disciples asked him to prescribe a system of fasting and prayer, Jesus said, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits." (14) In other words, if you do these things in the wrong spirit, you're doing more damage than good. In the empty practice of religious rites, pride rears its ugly head, and mechanical observance of custom takes the place of transformative processes.

Metaphorically, it's putting the cart before the horse to think that new laws and commandments will improve our condition. Jesus says, "Anyone here with two ears had better listen! There is light within a person of light, and it shines on the whole world. If it does not shine, it is dark." (24)

This arrogance is not exclusive to the practitioners of mainstream religion. How self-important are the rigid and dogmatic environmentalists? I have quite often seen environmentalists without a hint of compassion for their fellow human beings. The more rabid of that group even feel that the world would be better off without humans at all. In Phillip K. Dick style, I would counter, "What good is a prison without prisoners?"

Again, the point is missed when new rules for "reducing the carbon footprint" are put in place. It is not the rules that save us. It is the transformed spirit that begins making the right choices in life. As much as Gnostics are seen as "world hating," we're intelligent and self-aware enough to know that we should do what we can to keep the world from sucking more than it already does. Running out of fossil fuel would suck. Starving because the environment can no longer produce food would suck. Not being able to breathe clean air would suck.

As my favorite Gnostic, Dr. Stephan Hoeller, is wont to say, "No sane beast befouls its own nest," maybe what we need isn't more rules and laws. Maybe what we need is more sanity. I'd like to think that comes through gnosis, but then again, that's my opinion.

Why Christians Still Hate Gnostics

A while back, I set up a Google alert that sends me an e-mail when someone posts something online about "gnosticism," "gnostics," or "gnosis." These can be anything from blog posts to forum entries. I've read through each of the items that comes into my Inbox. The reason I set this up was primarily to see the discourse regarding Gnosticism unfold online, both from the Gnostics point of view and from the modern-day Christian heresiologists. It's really a fascinating conversation to see.

On the one hand, you have the Gnostics (amateur students, practitioners, and ordained ministers) discussing the path to gnosis amongst themselves on sites like Palm Tree Garden and some of the gnostic blogs. In general, I've not seen any anti-Christian rhetoric, calls for the destruction of the Church, or anything like that. In fact, I think I'm more confrontational in my posts than anyone on the Gnostic side of the spectrum.

Then, on the other hand, you have anti-Gnostic posts from fundamentalist Christians and Catholics alike; heresiological apologists so to speak. Obviously, questions are being asked within the flock. People are looking at the Nag Hammadi texts or reading about the Gnostics in modern literature or watching shows on the History Channel, and they're asking how this fits in with their faith. These inconvenient little forays into non-canonical territory are a little like Toto pulling at the curtain and showing the man behind the Wizard.

The Wizard: "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

The Christian response to the resurgence of interest in Gnosticism is the same as it was roughly 1800 years ago, when the frail body of the Church was just beginning to form and questions were raised that threatened (in their eyes) to destroy the Church before it was even built. Old, effectively intimidating words like "blasphemy" and "heresy" are employed, and the great disdain that Ireneaus felt for the Gnostics of his age is reborn in the rhetoric of the modern apologist blogger.

So, where does this disdain come from? What is it about the Gnostics that the Christians hate so much? I've compiled a list of things that I (neophyte that I am) feel have been consistently disputed across the millennia:

• First and foremost, in my opinion, is that the Gnostics call into question the validity of the Holy Bible. The additional scriptures the Gnostics wrote (including the ones in the Nag Hammadi Library, Pistis Sophia, and others) coupled with the Gnostic tendency to discount the importance of the Old Testament (except for the Wisdom books) is really too much to bear for most fundamentalists. Their basic belief is in the inerrancy of the Scripture in the Bible. According to the Basic Beliefs of the Southern Baptist Convention: "The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trusthworthy (sic)."
• Secondly, the Gnostics believe that the Jehovah God of the Old Testament is a fallible, imperfect Demiurge, known by many names, including Yaldabaoth, Saklas, and Samael, none of which are favorable names to have. Christians believe that the Creator of the world and the Father of Christ are one in the same. Gnostics see the imperfection of this world, the harsh realities of life, and the sheer madness and cruelty of the Old Testament Jehovah and they can't rationalize how that relates to the Loving Father that Jesus the Christos spoke of.
  
• Thirdly, the Gnostics dispute the purpose and form of Jesus. Christians believe that Christ's blood sacrifice and our willingness to believe in Him is what grants us salvation. Gnostics again, can't cope with the idea that salvation has to come from a blood-thirsty god who demands an animal or human sacrifice, much less the slaughter of his own son. This is not a god that we care to worship or praise. The Logos (the Word) came to us in order to awaken us to our true selves and lead us into a direct experiential knowledge (gnosis) of the True God, who is Father to us all. Whether or not the Christos appeared to be human or actually took human form is something that is still debated in Gnostic circles. That fact also distresses the Christians.

I'll end on three bullet points in order that I can be a little symbolic. But suffice it to that the Gnostics basically counter the very basic principles of mainstream Christianity. They ask questions where the Church authorities demand unwavering belief. They have the audacity to question the actions of "God" in the Old Testament. But seriously, can you blame us? How barbaric does this sound?

If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy. [Deuteronomy 32:42 (King James Version)]

This is "God" speaking to his faithful servant Moses, right before he tells him, "Oh, by the way, for all your hard work in keeping my children together, you'll get to see Israel, but you won't set foot there. Yay Me."

The point is that Christians have hated Gnostics since the beginning of the Christian Era, and they're not likely to start liking them any time soon. The differences between the two are fundamental and unresolvable. Unfortunately for them, however, Toto has already pulled aside the curtain. What is seen cannot be unseen. What is said cannot be unsaid. Nearly 1800 years have passed since the Christians tried to purge society of Gnosticism, but these thousands of years passed with the Gnostic thread of thought always under the surface, occasionally resurfacing in movements like Manichaeism, Catharism, Alchemy, Theosophy, etc. and finally culminating in Mohammed Ali Samman's discovery at Nag Hammadi, Egypt.

As for the Gnostics, there is no hatred for Christians -- just the occasional (or not-so-occasional) chuckle when they contradict themselves. We focus on what we can focus on, which is our own practice and our own striving for gnosis. When you know the truth, you don't need to justify yourself.