The End of Gnosticism?

[David Casseres]

Hm.  I would have said the the spiritual needs of the people needed to
be balanced against the priesthood's need for power and control.  But
that's just me.

On 5/5/06, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
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> On May 5, 2006, at 12:25 AM, Glenn Scheper wrote:
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> Since my youthful psychosis and other meditative events
> could be interpreted as "direct gnosis", I tried to use that
> label, "gnostic", for myself. But the term is so trashed by
> association with specific dogmas, I have stopped using it.
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> The hidden or secret knowledge idea (gnosis), together with a pronounced
> repugnance for materiality, both characteristic of the more with far-out
> religious tendencies  of the Second Century  Greco-Roman World, constitute
> a pretty good metaphor for  Psychosis.  And just as you, Glenn,  eventually
> pulled back from your temporary condition, and returned to Earth  as it
> were, the more cautious heads of late antiquity saw that  the religious need
> of mass society was something more compatible with a predominantly Earthly
> Existence.  That is to say, a balance was needed between the  requirements
> of the material world we know first hand and other more spiritual realms.
> That balance was so called orthodox Christianity.  The spiritual was not to
> be ruled out but merely held in better  balance.
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