pynchon a gnostic? II

[prozak at anus.com]

GNOSTICISM IS THE TEACHING based on Gnosis, the knowledge of 
transcendence arrived at by way of interior, intuitive means. 
Although Gnosticism thus rests on personal religious experience, it 
is a mistake to assume all such experience results in Gnostic 
recognitions. It is nearer the truth to say that Gnosticism expresses 
a specific religious experience, an experience that does not lend 
itself to the language of theology or philosophy, but which is 
instead closely affinitized to, and expresses itself through, the 
medium of myth. Indeed, one finds that most Gnostic scriptures take 
the forms of myths. The term “myth” should not here be taken to mean 
“stories that are not true”, but rather, that the truths embodied in 
these myths are of a different order from the dogmas of theology or 
the statements of philosophy. 

...

Like Buddhism, Gnosticism begins with the fundamental recognition 
that earthly life is filled with suffering. In order to nourish 
themselves, all forms of life consume each other, thereby visiting 
pain, fear, and death upon one another (even herbivorous animals live 
by destroying the life of plants). In addition, so-called natural 
catastrophes -- earthquakes, floods, fires, drought, volcanic 
eruptions -- bring further suffering and death in their wake. Human 
beings, with their complex physiology and psychology, are aware not 
only of these painful features of earthly existence. They also suffer 
from the frequent recognition that they are strangers living in a 
world that is flawed and absurd. 

Many religions advocate that humans are to be blamed for the 
imperfections of the world. Supporting this view, they interpret the 
Genesis myth as declaring that transgressions committed by the first 
human pair brought about a “fall” of creation resulting in the 
present corrupt state of the world. Gnostics respond that this 
interpretation of the myth is false. The blame for the world’s 
failings lies not with humans, but with the creator. Since -- 
especially in the monotheistic religions -- the creator is God, this 
Gnostic position appears blasphemous, and is often viewed with dismay 
even by non-believers. 

[ Note: this removes absolutism from morality by acknowledging, as 
did ancient civilizations like India, Greece and Rome, the 
imperfection of reality and its symbolic "gods." Only Judaism and 
Christianity are on the "other side" from this view; in Christianity 
and Judaism, gOD is total perfection and demands a certain binary 
allegiance from his subjects. This causes an "absolute" moralism to 
be in effect, in which individuals are assumed to have pure knowledge 
of events and causes, and, therefore, make conscious moral choices in 
all decisions. ]

(Summary of omitted paragraph: Gnosticism is pantheistic. "it may 
therefore be true to say that all is God, for all consists of the 
substance of God")

One of the aeonial beings who bears the name Sophia (“Wisdom”) is of 
great importance to the Gnostic world view. In the course of her 
journeyings, Sophia came to emanate from her own being a flawed 
consciousness, a being who became the creator of the material and 
psychic cosmos, all of which he created in the image of his own flaw. 
This being, unaware of his origins, imagined himself to be the 
ultimate and absolute God. Since he took the already existing divine 
essence and fashioned it into various forms, he is also called the 
Demiurgos or “half-maker” There is an authentic half, a true deific 
component within creation, but it is not recognized by the half-maker 
and by his cosmic minions, the Archons or “rulers”. 

...

Not all humans are spiritual (pneumatics) and thus ready for Gnosis 
and liberation. Some are earthbound and materialistic beings 
(hyletics), who recognize only the physical reality. Others live 
largely in their psyche (psychics). Such people usually mistake the 
Demiurge for the True God and have little or no awareness of the 
spiritual world beyond matter and mind. 

In the course of history, humans progress from materialistic sensate 
slavery, by way of ethical religiosity, to spiritual freedom and 
liberating Gnosis. As the scholar G. Quispel wrote: “The world-spirit 
in exile must go through the Inferno of matter and the Purgatory of 
morals to arrive at the spiritual Paradise.” This kind of evolution 
of consciousness was envisioned by the Gnostics, long before the 
concept of evolution was known. 

[ Note: Also Hinduism/ancient proto-Buddhism, which would be the most 
likely candidate for derivation of Gnostic belief, since it is 
produced by a population of the same ethnic group, has similar 
beliefs. ]

Gnostics do not look to salvation from sin (original or other), but 
rather from the ignorance of which sin is a consequence.

...

If the words “ethics” or “morality” are taken to mean a system of 
rules, then Gnosticism is opposed to them both.

...

Rules, however, are not relevant to salvation; that is brought about 
only by Gnosis. Morality therefore needs to be viewed primarily in 
temporal and secular terms; it is ever subject to changes and 
modifications in accordance with the spiritual development of the 
individual. 

...

Death does not automatically bring about liberation from bondage in 
the realms of the Demiurge. Those who have not attained to a 
liberating Gnosis while they were in embodiment may become trapped in 
existence once more. It is quite likely that this might occur by way 
of the cycle of rebirths. Gnosticism does not emphasize the doctrine 
of reincarnation prominently, but it is implicitly understood in most 
Gnostic teachings that those who have not made effective contact with 
their transcendental origins while they were in embodiment would have 
to return into the sorrowful condition of earthly life. 

...

The noted scholar of Gnosticism, G. Filoramo, wrote: "Jung's 
reflections had long been immersed in the thought of the ancient 
Gnostics to such an extent that he considered them the virtual 
discoverers of 'depth psychology' . . . ancient Gnosis, albeit in its 
form of universal religion, in a certain sense prefigured, and at the 
same time helped to clarify, the nature of Jungian spiritual 
therapy."

http://www.gnosis.org/gnintro.htm

...

"It became one of the three main belief systems within 1st century 
Christianity....The [ Christian Gnostic ] movement and its literature 
were essentially wiped out by the end of the 5th century CE by heresy 
hunters from mainline Christianity."

[ Note: Probably by some guy throwing poo and screaming, "Anti-
Semite!" ]

http://www.religioustolerance.org/gnostic.htm

...

The doctrine of salvation by knowledge. This definition, based on the 
etymology of the word (gnosis "knowledge", gnostikos, "good at 
knowing"), is correct as far as it goes, but it gives only one, 
though perhaps the predominant, characteristic of Gnostic systems of 
thought. Whereas Judaism and Christianity, and almost all pagan 
systems, hold that the soul attains its proper end by obedience of 
mind and will to the Supreme Power, i.e. by faith and works, it is 
markedly peculiar to Gnosticism that it places the salvation of the 
soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the 
mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that 
knowledge. 

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06592a.htm

...

Gnosticism is a concept of spiritual experience which has its roots 
in many religious practices and is not restricted to Christianity. It 
is also found in the Kabbalah of Judaism, the philosophy of 
NeoPlatonism, and in modern Iraq a small sect of peasants called 
Mandaeans (their word for 'knowers') still survives today. 

http://www.dragonswing.net/gnosticism.htm

...

Main Entry: no·et·ic 
Pronunciation: nO-'e-tik
Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek noEtikos intellectual, from noein to think, from 
nous mind
Date: 1653
: of, relating to, or based on the intellect 

...

The Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient codices 
containing over fifty texts, was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. 
This immensely important discovery includes a large number of primary 
Gnostic scriptures -- texts once thought to have been entirely 
destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define "orthodoxy" --
 scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and 
the Gospel of Truth.

...

Gnosis derives from Greek, and connotes "knowledge" or the "act of 
knowing". (On first hearing, it is sometimes confused with another 
more common term of the same root but opposite sense: agnostic, 
literally "not knowing", a knower of nothing.) The Greek language 
differentiates between rational, propositional knowledge, and the 
distinct form of knowing obtained not by reason, but by personal 
experience or perception. It is this latter knowledge, gained from 
experience, from an interior spark of comprehension, that constitutes 
gnosis.1 

[ This is an important issue: much is made in philosophy of the a 
priori versus a posteriori nature of intuition/logic. ]

In the first century of the Christian era this term, Gnostic, began 
to be used to denote a prominent, 
even if somewhat heterodox, segment of the diverse new Christian 
community. Among these early 
followers of Christ, it appears that an elite group delineated 
themselves from the greater 
household of the Church by claiming not simply a belief in Christ and 
his message, but a "special 
witness" or revelatory experience of the divine. It was this 
experience, this gnosis, which--so 
these Gnostics claimed--set the true follower of Christ apart from 
his fellows. Stephan Hoeller 
explains that these Gnostic Christians held a "conviction that 
direct, personal and absolute 
knowledge of the authentic truths of existence is accessible to human 
beings, and, moreover, that 
the attainment of such knowledge must always constitute the supreme 
achievement of human life." 2

...

It was on a December day in the year of 1945, near the town of Nag 
Hammadi in Upper Egypt, that 
the course of Gnostic studies was radically renewed and forever 
changed. An Arab peasant, 
digging around a boulder in search of fertilizer for his fields, 
happened that day upon an old, 
rather large red earthenware jar. Hoping to have found buried 
treasure, and with due hesitation 
and apprehension about the jinn, the genie or spirit who might attend 
such an hoard, he smashed 
the jar open with his pick. Inside he discovered no treasure and no 
genie, but books: more than a 
dozen old papyrus books, bound in golden brown leather.6 Little did 
he realize that he had found 
an extraordinary collection of ancient texts, manuscripts hidden up a 
millennium and a half before 
(probably deposited in the jar around the year 390 by monks from the 
nearby monastery of St. 
Pachomius) to escape destruction under order of the emerging orthodox 
Church in its violent 
expunging of all heterodoxy and heresy. 

The Gnostics were not much interested in dogma or coherent, rational 
theology--a fact which 
makes the study of Gnosticism particularly difficult for individuals 
with "bookkeeper mentalities". 
(Perhaps for this very same reason, consideration of the Gnostic 
vision is often a most gratifying 
undertaking for persons gifted with a poetic ear, as Harold Bloom has 
amply witnessed in his last 
several books). One just cannot cipher up Gnosticism into syllogistic 
dogmatic affirmations. The 
Gnostics cherished the ongoing force of divine revelation--Gnosis was 
the creative experience of 
revelation, a rushing progression of understanding, and not a static 
creed. Carl Gustav Jung, the 
great Swiss psychologist and a life-long student of Gnosticism in its 
various historical 
permutations, affirms,

we find in Gnosticism what was lacking in the centuries that 
followed: a belief in the efficacy of individual revelation and 
individual knowledge. This belief was rooted in the proud feeling of 
man's affinity with the gods....

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhlintro.html
-- 
Backup Rider of the Apocalypse
www.anus.com/metal/
DEATH AND BLACK METAL