The Bible. Myth or Reality?

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So you think that a Gnostic should know every truth known to man.

Only a real fool would think he knows even a small % of all truths.

But if you reduce the number of truths, know that I do know some truth. Ask away and I will be pleased to share.

I will give you that our myths are just as weird as any other religious myth.

You though will have to admit that since we Gnostic Christians end being Universalists and not the immoral homophobic and misogynous divisive believers that Orthodoxy creates, that we are a cut above them morality wise.

And morality is what is important and not the myth we happen to use to enhance our seeking for God. God as defined as the best set of rules and laws to live life by.

Regards
DL

So you think that a Gnostic should know every truth known to man.

Only a real fool would think he knows even a small % of all truths.

Yes, Everyone knows some truth.

Yes, I will agree you are better then the fundamentalists. But then again, atheist have better morals then most fundamentalists also.

At one point in time I felt that way somewhat, but the more I read between the lines of the history books and started catching up contextually as well as literally on the nitty gritty of what this world has been in the past, even a couple hundred years ago; I don't think there's ever been a time as good as now to be alive on this planet. I mean that in the sense not only of mans inhumanity to man, the constant warfare, feudalism, and supression of free thought by organized religions but I'm talking about things like the black plague, the largest semetary in Paris having something like a 20 foot groundswell from all the burials, people thinking it was the end times simply walking all over Europe aimlessly with their feet bleeding all over the ground, etc. etc.. In large part because of the black plague it was only in the last few centuries that people started showering or bathing again - prior to that the belief was that the plague was in the water.

I remember in reading John Ralston Saul's 'Voltaire's Bastards' that while he not only outlined significant swaths of French, Spanish, British, Canadian, and US political history he also talked about the development of France, talked about how Paris before public sanitation had a mound of feces down the middle of the street, certain people would come with carts to carry it out to bogs in the countryside, stranger still there were peasants with their shacks at the edges of these bogs who'd make a living diving into those bogs hoping to find things like missing jewelry and the like. All of that was even after the late Renaissance. Try on for size thinking about what things were like in time periods previous to that. Greece and Rome had somewhat of a stutter forward in terms of at least no black plague to discourage bathing and had working water but I'd imagine things were only so significantly better.

I think there's general tendency people have, particularly if going through a rough life or seeing a lot of pain inflicted, to feel like their era is the worst in their century or perhaps within a few centuries - I'd really argue from my own observations that the farther one goes back the worse man's inhumanity to man gets, the worse the bullying gets, the worst the mind-control by stigma becomes (stigma even as a death sentence) and while there may have been a few small islands of good things like Dabrovnik in the middle ages such pinpoints of light as that were surrounded by abject darkness. Just hearing about how the Catholic church higher ups treated each other from the time of the fall of Rome onward to the middle ages it's as if they were still only slowly growing out literal cut-throat assassination politics. In Rome an emperor rarely made it a few years without being assassinated, at the time of the sacking of Jerusalem it was three emperors in rapid succession before Vespatian took power (in fact many would suggest that the three horns in reference to Daniel's 4th beast was exactly that event). In comparison people in the baby-boomer generation still remember quite often exactly where they were and what they were doing when JFK was assassinated.


On another topic, Manichaean Gnosticism, don't get me wrong - if the shape of your life, your own emotions, your upbringings, and your longings point you toward this particular system of belief it's a thing between you and your own soul, in that sense it's probably exactly where your soul wants you and I have no interest in debating you out of it because it's not at all my place to. Since that's the case I'll try not to cross the line into persuading you against it, again it would be none of my business to do so, but I still at least prefer to say something on the perceptual issues - like history - just so you aren't in that belief system based on a few common distortions of perspective.

I can't tell you what not to do, like I said to Ana a minute ago that's your own soul, you're own HGA leading and if it's your own Will's leaning (one thing I'd agree with Crowley on) 'nobody shall say nay'.

My own preference - while I don't mind private liberality in one's exploration of themselves and with intimates - is to really emphasize the normality and wholesomeness of occultism (something I think Manly P Hall did wonderfully), emphasizing that the real values and simple integrities that people think came from the Bible come even moreso from the high-pagan mystery schools and that the Bible is a holy book to the extent that imports such texts. I tend to feel like people are trying to find things that will work in their lives, make society work better, but particularly a lot of people these days are looking for reasons to be ethical as things like fundamentalist Christianity breaks down. They run from the hippy-dippy because they're used to seeing new-agers go nutty, wrap themselves in crystals, and seem to go purile while talking about crystal ships up in the sky or doing weird things with magnets - part of that of course is pejorative, part of it's truth, but quite sadly it's part of why people run like heck from so much stuff related to what was considered 20th century 'new thought'. Needless to say, as I mentioned in one of Goebel's threads on art and post-modernism that the public, generally into very simple life, tends to look at the larger things going on around them as clouds sailing overhead, they take a few tangent remarks from a satirist or political spindoctor as the right way to view it, they ridicule it, minimize it, and are done with it to keep their own inertia (which I have to admit - if one's particularly early in their evolution I don't know if there's much else they really can do without throwing their responsibilities up in the air and having their lives fall apart - they simply quite often aren't people with a lot of internal resource to go around and those who per say do have a lot of energy to be hot-shot egotists or narcissists are actually perhaps right over the boarder from falling into the negative consequences from that, reforming through the pain, and moving a step beyond into a realization that the world as it was taught to them is for a rubric of education that they've outgrown and that they need to reconsider how they handle that energy).

From that perspective I love that with occultism - particularly things like Rosicrucianism, Martinism, Golden Dawn diaspora, in a lot of cases it's not only very highly functional adults - professionals, great family men and women, role-models for the youth even - but also very devout and pious people who are looking for ways to really find their own grip with the boyscout, eaglescout, or Masonic type of civics. Sadly for what I've been through with autism most of the damage done to my desire to be out there doing that came from the notion that because people couldn't read my body language that I was a monster and that my help, my influence, my presence in general simply wasn't wanted - it's part of what I'm really using the white light of esotericism to try and grow out from underneath.

All that said I have a lot of open-minded friends, ie. very intelligent guys even if they're the same types who'll take their sportbikes up to 190 on the highway, obsess over different ways to do water sports, have macho obsessions about social code, or get almost as excited about finding novel ways to light a bong as they get excited about kyte-surfing; they're seeking the same things I am, looking into the QM and physics they learn in school (several of them are engineers), and while they're a bit conservative about things that seem 'wooh' or unmanly they do recognize a good argument one way or another when they hear it - they know I'm in the orders I'm in (one or two are particularly factious in general and it's almost entertaining to tell them things that just blow their tops - one particularly said he wouldn't let me live it down that I'm actually considering having a ritual room in my house) but I feel like I'm kinda opening a door that other people in the group have sometimes dabbled with or looked at to a certain extent, and going all in with it. Lent my five-book series of Promethia to a friend this weekend just because, short of having him trudge through Dion Fortune, it was one of the quicker ways he could get some of the overtures of this stuff.

I suppose part of why I want to normalize it - I really emphatically believe its the way forward, ie. it's the next spiritual step for mankind, and part of that is people actually knowing what it is, how it's useful, how it can help them live more fulfilling lives (ie. it's not all about goetia or doing 'The Secret' to manifest 'stuff') but that it's a huge stretch of roadmap for self development into territories, even just on a psychological and within materialist-scope level, that are beyond any roadmap we currently have for positive psychology and cultivation of astounding mental health. It's a technology that the ancients had before the term 'psychology' came into vogue and I really think that psychology is still quite infant and minimally effective in comparison to what mystic and ceremonial operations can do for a person.



Thank you for that. To be honest I'd just call that Alan Watts kicking arse. That's probably one of the best speeches I've actually heard from him in that kind of time allotment.


I remember a recording a few years back of this guy talking about something like the zodiac and the cerebral cortex. He seems to flirt with Anthroposophy quite a bit!



Whether or not it's a naughty thing to do by occult standards (more so often than not it's quite frowned upon) I've had plenty of go-rounds with things like DXM and psilocybin. Had particularly powerful results with DXM and I remember at one point, after blubbering my heart out in confusion after just having gone back from some Theosophic study toward a fundamentalist Christian viewpoint that I was apologizing my head off to the Lord and what I saw - with a very deep sense of severity (not severity of it's emotional energy but you know how when you see something that you know is off the deep end, ie. so sacred, private, or just extreme that you feel like you're almost not supposed to be seeing it?) - within myself and within my own interior space a glowing sphere of light with several, perhaps five, six, or seven, layers of glowing light, as if they were each spheres of glowing dust slightly dimming its presence at each distance. It felt like the very center of that presence was an eye, an eye or really an I so profound that I was truly staring at the ultimate, something that had known me not just in this life, not for a few incarnations, but for all of eternity, and I felt the sublime profundity of it staring back at me - even though it seemed absolutely inert with respect to judging me in any way shape or form (really it seemed almost emotionless aside from just the core value of what it was). In so many ways it's the kind of presence I'd relate back to if thinking of a 'divine spark', what Max Heindel as I'm reading now in Cosmo Conception considered the core atom that's always with us in our incarnations (we all evolve from somewhere I guess), or just as well when Theresa of Avila wrote about the Interior Castle she seemed to be talking about an experience that hits in such layers that the light in the core of the castle - by each 'mansion' of ingress one makes - gets brighter by degree of proximity. Dion Fortune's three-ring and seven-shelled universe from The Cosmic Doctrine seems like a giant representation of a similar kind of concept.

I had many times of scrying in the astral, getting a sense of what it was light to perceive huge, realer-than-real, but simultaneously fuzzy concepts, like planet-sized concepts, beings, deities even, under the kind of blur one might have when they're just opening their eyes. Similarly there was a time a few years back when I invoked Isis in times of trouble and had one of the most profound experiences of my life over the subsequent two weeks (ecstatic currents weaving through my torso, sensing benevolent presences within a foot of me as if I had some kind of extended 'touch' or radar, a few times the ecstacies hit hard enough and my heart was glowing and fluttering strongly enough that I was afraid I'd either have a seizure or pop out of body). Occultism and particularly Hermetic Qabalah was where I found the footprint of the fourth-dimensional framework without drugs. Once I knew what it had to offer, something that was like a diving board over the edge of what I used to think of as psychedelic urgency or severity off into the abyss of the Real - THAT got me. All of that of course has tamed a bit, found equilibrium, and I live it in a manner in my life where, other things contextualized around it, it's not a wild ride nor do people around me feel like they're dealing with a spaceball. Regardless I'm finding out that so many of the personality traits, natural reflexes, chases for sublime beauty in things like music and art, all these things that pragmatist society would call a weakness or vice - not only was virtue and was strength after all but additionally was a thing with real roadmap to it rather than something that I'd be pining away with as my friends and family made grim jokes as I became a lonely old spinner with no wife or kids all because I didn't 'get real' or live by the mullet-man rules of life enough to make society's grade. I finally have not only a healthy framework to express my inner proclivities through but I also have a framework where while I feel like I'm studying things that would make a lot of people's brains bleed I find myself actually becoming more functional and adapted as an adult rather than less as a result of it - which is a possibility of living, again, way off most people's radars.

In this sense humanity has made advances. European medicine and industrialism in the UK propelled parts of North America and most of Europe into life as we know it, with increased spans, antibiotics, better hygiene, conveniences such as climate control, water treatment plants, various forms of transportation and advances in refrigeration. However we have been plagued with problems that accompany this such as pollution and now concern exists bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics.
Sources of fuel might not always be reliable. Fear, unfounded or not, over shortages lingers. Other species humans share the planet with have been threatened by our existence in larger numbers than ever before due to our impact. So there's a serious of drawbacks to how we live and just think only a tiny portion of the world actually lives like this. When the entire world is developed, these problems we see now will become worse.
So, we are not without worries even though we do have a better lifestyle. How long will it last? Is it possible to exist like this for thousands of years? Will civilization return to what it once was when and if resources become depleted? Will the US simply become a jobless society with a low value currency which will slow economic growth in this country and decrease standards of living? It's happening right now, in Europe, too. Americans and Europeans want the factory salaries but not the pollution and toll on the environment. It keeps factories from opening. What's left is a vacuum filled by low paying and government jobs such as social workers, teachers, regulators and clerks. Military employment is paid by the government. A lot of the defense contracting - financed by the government. A great deal of our economy is. So even though construction workers can find work, the government is paying them.
Our warfare casualties are lesser, land ownership greater, sense of freedom increased. All this is true in the West so it is easier to exist at this time but it is not "perfect" and with unresolved issues looming, doesn't look like it is going to be perfect in the future because once some of these are solved, more will crop up to take their place. We can keep improving but can we obtain perfection not that I am a pessimist. The opposite, in fact. I am an optimist!
Another thing to keep in mind, the more time elapses between events like American Civil War, World Wars i & ii and the Vietnam war, the more likely the return of that kind of warfare since people will not have direct experiences with the lessons of those wars and might become more lapse about the lives of soldiers. They will not understand the importance of keeping the casualty count down. The only reason it is so low now is because of activism over the Vietnam War.



It still happens in parts of the world and if the economy gets bad, it could be like that here. Where I live, people still collect aluminum cans, though not as much as when I was a kid, and they will go into homes under construction and rip the copper right out of them (yep, stealing.) They take the copper from power stations, too. Since copper is available and at a decent price, they do not have to scavenge in places like graves, dumps and bogs, but desperate people are still trying to recycle metals and thieving copper has been worse seen the economic turn in 2007. It's just the copper's there so people do not have to resort to such sordid tactics but keep in mind, men still work as garbage collectors, corpse preparers, chemical toilet emptiers, medical examiners, plumbers. All these jobs are on the unsavory side and they perform them for money so it's not that different from collecting waste on the street, is it? We just don't want to look at what happens under our noses. Imagine what it is like working at a landfill. The one near here has something like a hundred plastic bags circling in the wind at any given time. It's not that I work there, I have driven past it, and the ones who live in the houses nearby, their yards and houses look like extensions of the land fill with fences made of discarded hub caps and all kinds of junk they scavenged from the landfill. So yep the unsavory layers are here, even in a developed nation, one that some consider the richest in the world.



Advances in medicine. It's the number one thing that has improved our quality of life compared to theirs. Abolition of slavery. Ownership of land. And we have benefited, the problem being, how long will it last? Already talk exists of bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics so if that trend continues, it will undo all those advances made because of antibiotics. They will no longer work. Luckily we have soap and water but what if the water becomes more scarce because so many people are competing for over allocated water sources? See how a step back is needed. We cannot afford to think, well we have all this water because we are living in the best time so we can do whatever we want with it and waste as much as we want. We can water daily our acreages in the middle of the desert, it's fine. People do think that way in this country. In the future what we have now might not be here but the population will continue to increase all over the globe due to advances in medicine. If the water isn't available, they can't keep themselves clean. They get sick, the antibiotics will not work because the bacteria has developed resistance to those available and the one needed costs something like a thousand dollars more. Money is scarce because the currency doesn't have as much value. Huge population, not enough jobs for them all. So, you see? It hangs by a thread only because we think it can continue like this indefinitely. All we need to do is keep procreating and we don't have to worry about anything. It will always be like it is now. Already, many places around the globe have these problems and just because this is America, do not think those same problems can exist here. People are in denial.




I do not subscribe to their exact methods. I see them as a window into the past. Looking at them could be like looking at the very origins of the Christian tradition even though I am not talking about Christianity as it is practiced, for the most part, today, more a way of grappling with an unjust, brutal world in crises where hope seemed lost. Much of what Christianity started as, I suspect, has been lost and is replaced by strict adherence to the KJV of the Bible and a desire to see theocracies in response to their insecurities, or Catholicism which is rocked by scandals and criminal behavior and has a reputation for being less than stellar through the ages what with people buying up the indulgences and the inquisitions. I am not interested in joining their religion, just examining. I do not like the idea of joining any religion or system of thought.

ANA the point is the bible is a collection of sources, it is not a source in its own right. I know little about the OT but in the case of the NT scholars are fairly sure Mathew and Luke are sourced from Mark and what they call Q, then of course we have the Pauline letters, some of which are thought to be pseudepigrapha others which are thought to be written by him. From his writtings it seems that he met with James and a few of the Disciples very early after the death of Jesus. Then there are the Nag Hammadi scrolls which I am sure you are well versed in, and here you have several new sources for the story. Using various techniques scholars are able to determine which stories are likely to be based on actual events. To me and many people it seems unlikely that Jesus did not exist. The main argument among early Christians was not so much to do with his existence rather it was his divinity. The gospel of Thomas is a very useful tool in sorting out the various accounts of Q and M along with Paul, and the other gospels.

Essentially I see the bible as some loose historical documents which have been stitched together and greatly expanded into an elaborate myth. I do believe there are enough independent, multiple attestations in the NT to say that on the balance of probabilities an apocalyptic preacher who followed John the Baptist, angered the Sanhedrin and by way of claiming to be King, also pissed off the Romans, and was summarily executed for it. That we have almost no Roman writings for this is not really very surprising. After all there was no insurrection associated with his delusions and so nothing of note came from his life. It is more the tall tales that were told after his death, by his disciples, to explain how he could be the Messiah even though he had been crucified, that led to his fame. Oral tradition being what it is, these tales grew ever more grand until eventually it is decided that Jesus was God.

The early Gnostics, as far as I am aware, were not divided on Jesus as a man who became Christ, Indeed Thomas speaks of how all people can achieve the same status as Jesus.

Ana, I'd agree that today is still a mess and turning on the news to so ISIS/ISIL in the middle-east, concerns about things like peak oil, pollution from an increasingly industrial world, possibility of us refining materials right up into the atmosphere and thrashing the ecosystem to where things get a lot worse - I couldn't agree more that it's all there, or additionally that the 'thin veneer' of society is largely that, ie. it could all get taken away from us again. This is where I consider that God is in control of the mess, that it's a classroom, and in particular I tend to think of just how many nukes have been out there for 60 or so years and no more Hiroshimas or Nagasakis have happened since (people almost see it as a mark of paranoia to be concerned over it) really suggests - over and above various country's national intelligence agencies - that something or someone else has been assisting in matters.

IMHO if God's plan is evolution and more importantly evolution here we'll have our hands forced somewhat in that direction, we won't be able to literally burn the world down even if it seems like we make it out just by the skin of our teeth in a lot of situations. In fact it wouldn't generate sincere anxiety, nor be the kind of thing that could shape, influence, or really challenge people, unless it was something that seemed like a very imminent possibility.

That's just my $.02 though.

The New Testament is pretty much a book of Gnostic STORIES that were passed along from person to person.

Anyway, I suggest reading up on the Prophet Mani and "Practitioners of Ablutions." A picture will emerge of many cults led by charismatic types such as the Prophet Mani. Some of them were very strict, like the Elkesaites, who criticized others for not adhering to the Mosaic Law and early Christians were the targets of such cults in the region. What is in the New Testament becomes clearer after studying. You see, this Silk Road existed in Parthia and yes, it could be the origins of the early Gnostics who lived along this well traveled route, absorbing knowledge from a variety of cultures.

And Mani believed Jesus to never have been birthed. Many Gnostics could not stand the idea of giving physical birth so they would never say Christos was physically born into this world.

If the past is any indication...civilizations come and go, and ours certainly could as well.

That seems to be what the stats are showing.

Perhaps that is also why most Muslims countries are voting secular law instead of Sharia.

Regards
DL

Snipped for brevity but an interesting read. Thanks.

Regards
DL

That's scripture.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

I do not quite agree on why Jesus was made a part of the Trinity by Constantine.

I think it was for his own self-deification.

http://www.simchajtv.com/movie-secrets- ... istianity/

Regards
DL

Another point I completely forgot to make when referencing the basic grip on the 'why' of material optimism or the belief in the 'redemption of matter'. It's a big one and I can't believe I forgot to say something directly to this point.

The overall idea is that the collective unconscious or collective subconscious is the subconscious of our planet. When you really think about it our archetypal symbolism and imagery is of our planets cultures past and present and anything foreign to our planet in terms of ideas were likely brought here though the inner planes; even that seems to be done in extremely small and judicious doses through prophets, world-renowned philosophers and thinkers, etc. etc. when what we'd think of a new or original thought comes to the surface. If it were the subconscious of the entire solar system, galaxy, or universe constantly bombarding us I'd think that's where we might throw in the towel and say were screwed but there's not much to suggest that.

The point being though - evolution and moral growth of a single person has a significant effect because we're not suggesting that this influence or improvement on the earth needs to occur through external means they inspire enough people to be like them; that's on the table as a minor component but it's only that and usually only would come into play after they've had a far more significant effect at other levels and places. People who take their occult evolution seriously are like pool filters for the collective subconscious, helping to clean out the junk, reducing the general level of negative and caustic temptations that people run into overall, and ultimately lowering the depravity of the planet even if only by a small degree if that person's effort is taken on its own. Sincere and diligent efforts that people make to get themselves right with God as well as make the world a better place register lasting residual effect on the planetary akasha - or at least so the theory goes.

Being that we're highly evolved beings with intense reasoning and mental and physical creative faculties it means that to the planet earth that we live on we're a double-edged sword; on one hand the planet suffers a lot of our angst and like a personal subconscious has the proverbial memory of an elephant regardless of human incarnations and discarnations. Sometimes I can't help but feel like that drives some of the impetus behind old entrenched blood feuds that some people's in parts of the globe has where, if a tyrant is removed or if a political force that was chaperoning them is pulled away they start butchering each other as if the craving to do so had been building the entire time that the previous power was in place.

Regardless, if a person believes in the kinds of things like Jungian collective unconscious, planetary conscious, etc. it makes sense - it's different degrees of the same substance, ie. mind-stuff, interacting and exchanging data (the very large collective being modulated by perhaps the very small-in-comparison individual or somewhat small minority organization) but it all would have an impact.

Oops, oh, my goodness; I forget to answer the question.

There are elements of reason and myth in the bible.

But the overall truth is, the bible is a work of art coming
from the creative mind of human beings; per free verse
poetic expressions in parables, psalms, and such as that.

This creative mind that generally speaking is the 'right
brain' is more related to social cognition activities,
including cognitive and affective empathy,
music, and yes, art in general; as well
as connecting in sensual
ways of human
connection.

Unfortunately, in modern societies
as culture becomes more of a 'left
brained' way of mechanical cognition;
the development of the art of mind is
failing among the general populaces as humans
become more like machines than the balanced
connecting works of art they are overall evolved
to be. The overall result of this is humans are no
longer creating new ways of looking at the world in
artful ways of being. Instead, the words of others becomes
gold; including the works of art in the past; like the bible
in all its gold and tainted human art of life. That's a real
problem being stuck in the past; whether it is the bible, science,
or even the strangest of pagan and or occult beliefs. Truly Aleister
Crowley gets one thing correct. Human relative free will with LOVE
in do as thou wilt; instead of following the rules of times gone past,
is the way of true freedom of human expression. I thrive as I do not
limit my learning to any avenue; any TYPE of person; per standard IQ
or anything else. This world is big and everyone has something worth
while to say; for those who listen, learn, and do learn something, at
least, from the greatest to the least; where the meek often
have the greatest lessons of all to learn
about a simple life
of LOVE and
HUMAN RELATIVE
FREE WILL IN MIND
AND BODY
BALANCE;
like the other
really smart
animals who
live this
way.

The rest of it; most of it
anyway; as far as intellectual
pursuits; is mental masturbation
by the time the game of love is over
for the time
being
now
in human
relative free
WILL.

But yeah
'THAT'S FUN TOO..

People will not
STOP that either..

ANA. As I understand early gnostic history, there was little debate about Jesus as a man. The whole "Jesus as Incarnate god" came a little later, followed by the idea that he never entered the material realm. As for Mani and his followers, as far as I am aware it is not Jesus birth that they are concerned about, rather they see him as a false prophet, so I don't really understand what you are trying to say by this "And Mani believed Jesus to never have been birthed. Many Gnostics could not stand the idea of giving physical birth so they would never say Christos was physically born into this world". From what I can tell Mani thought of Jesus as a living breathing person.

Evidence please. I will accept that there are are gnostic writings that were not included in the bible. But it is true that no gnostic writings have been found that predate Christianity.