The End of Gnosticism?

[Paul Mackin]

On May 5, 2006, at 10:03 PM, David Casseres wrote:

> 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.


It's all part of the package.


>
> On 5/5/06, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On May 5, 2006, at 12:25 AM, Glenn Scheper wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>