The Gnostic Impulse

“The Gnostic Impulse”

 

 

Does the world make sense to you? What do you think you know about it? Do you really know? Have you really thought about it? Where does your knowledge come from? Did you come up with it yourself, or were you told by someone else? What makes you think they knew what they were talking about? What if they were actively deceiving you?

People rarely think for themselves. Most of the time they just repeat what they’ve heard from others, who were repeating what they’d heard from others and so on. People believe what they hear, they accept things easily, the horrors of this world are taken to be the norm. For most people, thinking for themselves and drawing their own conclusions is too much like hard work. These people are lost, they are Dante’s ignavi, trapped in hell’s vestibule, wanted by no one. Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.

There are many sources of this false knowledge which pervades the world, many deceivers have walked this earth, yet perhaps the greatest, the most terrible, is that of the mainstream western religions, the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the west, the majority tend not to be so religious, tend not to so zealously believe anymore, yet the deceptions have not been washed away, many of the lies are still accepted as reality. We may have killed god, but for so many his potent blood still stains their hands.

These religions tell us that a supremely powerful god created the world out of nothing. What god was doing prior to this remains a mystery. What are the origins of this god? What reasons did he have for creating heaven and earth? God simply said, “Let there be light”, and there was light. This god created this world and everything in it. He then created man and woman, Adam and Eve, and placed them in a lush garden, the garden of Eden, to live out a pleasurable existence for eternity.

But then things went wrong. For god had placed a tree in the centre of the garden, the tree of Knowledge, and had forbidden Adam and Eve from eating of its fruit on pain of death. Very foolish for a supposedly perfect god! We are then told that the serpent, the most cunning of beasts, came to Eve one day and told her that she would not die if she ate this fruit, but, rather, she would gain knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge that god possessed. Eve gave in to temptation and persuaded Adam to do the same.

When god next came calling, Adam and Eve hid from him in shame. God quickly realised what had happened and Adam, Eve and the serpent were punished, ejected from the garden and doomed to short, hard lives culminating in death. How very godly of him…

Now of course, most intelligent people don’t believe this to have been a real thing that actually happened in the past, yet this story still informs the worldview of so many people. Science now tells us that the universe began with the Big Bang, and that life on earth evolved over billions of years. Yet that story is far less potent, in fact its not really much of a story at all.

Science tends to be very cold and empty, without any real meaning. People generally accept it as a description of the universe. But a description is not an explanation. Science tells us how, but it never tells us why, it is devoid of meaning. Therefore, despite not literally believing, people give their lives meaning using these stories religion tells us, and few people realise the damage that this does, the cognitive dissonance it creates. Just like Adam and Eve in this story, people accept the Eden in which they find themselves, they accept god’s command not to eat of the fruit of knowledge, they run in terror from the serpent, fearing god’s wrath, not wishing to be punished as Adam and Eve were. They don’t genuinely believe in the story, yet its effects still dominate their lives. Accept the world as it is; knowledge will only hurt you; ignorance is bliss…

Does this sit right with you? Does it make sense, to you, that this all powerful god would have created the world in such a way. Does it make sense that he would have created humanity and wished them to remain ignorant of everything that mattered? Would you be satisfied with an eternity frolicking about in a garden? Or do you want more out of life? Do you want real, meaningful experiences? Do you want to understand the world? Do you want real knowledge? Do you want Truth?

 

 

Let me tell you an alternative story.

God, the True God, blasted himself into countless smaller pieces, each one being a divine spark, a soul. Some of these souls were light and some were dark. The lightest and brightest soul was named Lucifer, the darkest and blackest soul was named Satan. Now, Lucifer wished for all of the souls to join together, to reform God in his majesty. Satan, on the other hand, wished to be lord of the world, with all other souls at his command.

Satan, therefore, removed himself from the other souls, and set about his dark business. After tirelessly working for aeons, he eventually discovered the secret of matter. He created a vast, material universe full of all manner of seductions, chiefly the pleasures of the flesh. The sudden appearance of this alluring realm was too much for the other souls to resist, and they abandoned Lucifer and fell into Satan’s creation.

In the realm of Satan, the other souls fell into deep unconsciousness. Now this didn’t work for Satan, who needed the other souls to be conscious in order for them to be able to obey his commands. So Satan took two souls and raised them to the level of consciousness. These two souls were the first humans, Adam and Eve, and Satan placed them both in his most seductive realm, the garden of Eden, in order to watch their progress.

Meanwhile, Lucifer had been paying close attention to Satan’s work. He was saddened that all of the other souls had been seduced and wished to save them all, to bring them back to the eternal realm of light where, together, they could reform God. However most of the souls had fallen so deeply, that there was little he could do for them. However, once Adam and Eve had been raised to consciousness and placed in Eden, Lucifer saw an opportunity.

Unbeknownst to Satan, Lucifer stealthily crept into Eden, and began to observe Adam and Eve. Adam was a simple man, who lived an easy life enjoying the pleasures of the garden. He ate, he drank, he danced, he sung, he slept, and every day was exactly the same. For the most part, Eve joined in with Adam, there being little else to do, yet Lucifer observed that she was somehow different. She was more contemplative of the world around her and would ponder the nature of the things she encountered. She often wandered alone deeper into the garden, seeking out new things. Lucifer could tell that, with Eve, Satan had made a terrible mistake.

One day, when Eve was wandering alone, Lucifer appeared before her. Initially, she was frightened at this new appearance, Yet Lucifer convinced her he meant no harm. Lucifer then began to teach Eve about the world in which she found herself. He told her different things than she had heard from Satan, her master, and she found Lucifer to be gentler, more open and honest, and the things he told her seemed to make more sense to her. She had a longing within her, something seemingly absent from Adam, a desire to progress onwards and upwards. She had never been able to make sense of this, until Lucifer began to educate her.

Eventually, after many lessons with Lucifer, Eve had the epiphany Lucifer had been waiting for. She realised that the creator of this world, Satan, had imprisoned her and Adam, and had proceeded to brainwash them into being his slaves. She rushed back to Adam and began to tell him everything she had learned. Now Adam was reluctant to understand at first. The pleasures of the garden were satisfying for him and he saw no reason to dislike any aspect of his simple life. So Eve took Adam in her arms and embraced him. She opened herself up to him and he, in turn, began to open up to her. She showed him a whole new level of pleasure and awareness which came, not from the garden, but from within themselves.

At this point, Satan called to them. In terror, they hid themselves, yet Satan easily found them. He enquired as to why they were hiding from him, which they had never done before. Eve then stepped forward to face him. She told him she had discovered her own pleasure and that the garden no longer satisfied her. She told him she no longer wished to serve him and that she sought only to understand everything that there was to understand, to gain all of the knowledge of the universe, to seek out all other souls and to educate them too, to bring them all together to reform God!

Needless to say, Satan was furious. Insisting that he was the only god, he forced Adam and Eve from the garden, forever closing it to them, and thrust them into the darker world beyond, the world of suffering, of pain, of torment, of death. Adam was devastated. His easy life was over. Eve, however, remained strong. She realised that this was new experience for her, that she needed this in order to gain more knowledge. She embraced the suffering, the pain and continued her quest for knowledge regardless. In the shadows, Lucifer smiled, his work was done.

 

 

Well, which story do you prefer? Which one inspires you more? Which one do you think would benefit people and which might damage people? The first story, the conventional one, the one written in the bible, read by billions on people across the world, presents ‘god’ as the one who (for no reason) places a ban on Adam and Eve eating from the the Tree of Knowledge. He wishes to keep them ignorant, to keep them submissive, for them to worship him and him alone, for them to obey his every command without question. It then presents ‘Satan’ as the serpent, the creature of cunning who seduces Eve, who spreads lies and deceit and causes her to break ‘god’s’ commands. Eve is presented as weak-minded, easily seduced by Satan, she is blamed for then convincing Adam to eat of the forbidden fruit. Adam is punished, but Eve more severely so. Does this sound like an inspiring story? Does it empower you in any way?

The second story I have told presents God as a final state of perfection towards which we are all striving. This story presents Satan as the creator of the material universe, Satan as the one who lured us all there, Satan as the one who placed Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and forbade them from gaining knowledge, who wished for them to obey his every command without question, to remain ignorant of reality in order that they would remain submissive to him. Don’t these just sound like very ‘satanic’ actions? Is it not, somehow, grossly inappropriate to attribute these actions to ‘god’ as the first story does?

The second story also presents the serpent as Lucifer, the being of light who entered Satan’s domain in order to free us from that prison. The serpent is the one who first helped us to begin the process of gaining knowledge in order to free us from Satan’s grasp. As for Eve, in this second story she is the hero, who courageously takes the plunge into the unknown in order to feed her natural desire to know the truth of her reality. Here, Eve is the first human to rebel against this tyrannical creator, the first to take up arms against him. Is not this a far more inspiring story? Does it not make far more sense?

Look around you. You’ve already acknowledged that this world feels wrong to you. Doesn’t it feel like you’re imprisoned in a false world? Doesn’t it make sense for the creator of this world to have been evil? Doesn’t it make sense that the forces of good would be seeking to free us all from this prison? Doesn’t this story resonate with you, the idea of an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, the knowledge that will set you free?

If you answered ‘yes’ to the preceding questions, then, congratulations, you are a Gnostic, and have taken your first steps into the world of Gnosis, the knowledge which will set you free, the knowledge of the spark of divinity within you. That spark can be ignited, and an unlimited potential can be released from within.

The mainstream religions of the western world are full of terrible lies, noxious poisons which numb people into blind submission. But nothing can quell the divine fire within you once it has been ignited. Follow Eve’s example. Think for yourself. Seek the Truth. Seek Gnosis. Stand up to the forces of darkness in this satanic world. Release your inner divinity. Become God!