Quotes and Excerpts

1. Gnostic Apostle Thomas

a book by Herbert Christian Merillat, 1997

Posted on the GNOSIS ARCHIVE

From the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

"After the opinions of the Gnostics had become known in the 16th century... Gnostic ideas had a considerable influence upon such idealists as Goethe, Novalis and Hegel. The theosophical movement of the 20th century with which Gnosticism has much in common, rightly claims the Gnostics as its spiritual ancestor. Jungian psychology [Jung, too, channeled spirit guides], which owes not a little to this movement, can be of some help in interpreting Gnostic mythology and may help to show that behind it there is a religious experience of a certain type."  Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 10, (Chicago: William Benton, 1968), 506.

As you read the excerpts below, please notice:

1. A different God. The gnostic system of a hierarchy of deities and angels fits the philosophy of Tolkien who envisioned a major God and many lesser gods or "sub-creators" responsible for various aspects of managing the world. See Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: Truth, Myth or 'Discovered Reality'?

2. A  feminine personality in the hierarchy of gods: Sophia or "wisdom"

3. Focus on self-knowledge rather than knowing and trusting God.

3. A psychological foundation that influenced the occultist, Carl Jung.

4. A dialectic focus on opposites and an ultimate union with a cosmic spirit or mystical Oneness.

 

Related information: Lilith, Kabbalah, Theosophy , Carl Jung

Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition & Dreams and DISC Assessments 

Introduction [www.gnosis.org/thomasbook/intro.html] "Twin" of Jesus?  "Thomas is best looked at in the context of Gnosticism.... [T]he various forms share some basic ideas:

  • The indescribable... supreme godhead, which is pure spirit, cannot have been the creator of a world full of evil and misery.
  • Emanations from that Oneness resulted in a hierarchy of lesser powers, one of which... made the world of matter.
  • Humankind -- part matter, part spirit -- must strive to cast off its gross material element and, as pure spirit, reunite with the One. Gnosis -- knowledge of an intuitive kind about one's true nature, an experience of reality... leads to this reunion. A messenger or savior... sometimes descends from the godhead to help people achieve gnosis....

"These thoughts are usually couched in creation myths in which intermediaries stand between the supreme divine entity and humankind. In some of these Sophia (Wisdom) is a key figure, a feminine aspect of the godhead, engendering the lower god who is maker of the cosmos. ...The savior figure is usually pure spirit, temporarily occupying a body...        

      "The Gospel of Thomas is a collection of sayings, found near Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945 -- sayings that Jesus is supposed to have entrusted to his 'twin'....  Contributing factors to renewed interest in old mystical systems are Carl Jung's school of depth psychology.... studies of Jewish mysticism, and much fuller study of Asian mystical systems....       

     "Many Western people today... are really much akin to Gnostics...  That... which strikes people as 'real' and 'true' but which lies beyond the reach of reason and logic is indeed a central element of Gnosticism...."


Chapter 1: "In the apocryphal Acts, Jesus is sometimes an elusive, protean figure, taking on various appearances: sometimes he is an old man, sometimes a youth, sometimes fat, sometimes lean. There is a strong suggestion that he was not really corporeal."


Chapter 3: "'To seek myself and know who I was and who and in what manner I now am, that I may again become that which I was: This is a characteristic formulation of the Gnostic goal. According to Gnostics, we must realize that there is at our core a spark of spirit which was once part of the universal spirit; that this individual spirit has become embedded in gross matter, in the body, through activities of lesser powers (often called archons or rulers), like the creator-lawgiver god of the Jews, who wish to keep the human spirit in thrall; that we can escape this bodily prison by recognizing our true original home and evade the grasp of the archons and ascend again to that home -- the spiritual Pleroma, the Fullness -- to be reunited in Oneness."

       "Gnosis is a Greek word for knowledge -- not... knowledge in the sense of rational learning but intuitive knowledge reaching beyond the limits of reason to truths hidden from ordinary experience and intellect....

       "...the Gnostic -- the Knower -- felt seized by a great truth that dominated his or her view of life and being. Gnosis was thought to lead to a unitive, or mystical, experience in which the composite world would be left behind and a primordial, undifferentiated Oneness regained. A close resemblance to Indian notions of 'enlightenment,' 'illumination,' and 'release' is readily apparent....

       "...the quest for an inner spiritual or mystical truth beyond the experience of worldly life is found among later Christian mystics, Muslim Sufis, Jewish Kabbalists, and various contemporary religious movements in the West....

       "The notion of intermediaries between an infinite, eternal, ineffable supreme entity and this world was by no means new with Gnostics.... Above and beyond anything imaginable was the realm of pure, universal Idea. A lower force -- the demiurge or world-creator -- had made order out of chaos, harmoniously blending the four elements of fire, water, earth, and air into a perfect sphere.....

       "The gods, as the artificer's intermediaries, had created humankind, a mixture of spirit and matter. The demiurge was the author of everything spiritual.... Rationality, that part of the human soul that comes from the demiurge, is immortal, but that part bestowed by the gods -- passions and appetites -- is mortal, and dies with the body. ...

      "For Philo [see Anne Rice Reimagines Jesus] the Logos (or Word) was an aspect of God, the formative principle and creative agent in the godhead, the intermediary between pure universal Idea and the composite material cosmos. But Philo also spoke at times of Sophia (Wisdom in English...) as a feminine creative agent. At times, following earlier Hellenized Jews, he called her the mother of the Word.' ...

       "But there were many more complicated creation myths in which various entities had a role. There were distinctive qualities known as aeons (such as Mind and Life) within the Fullness.... And there were agents of a lower order, outside the spiritual Fullness, in making the cosmos. They were known as rulers, angels, archons, and powers. ...

       "Among the archons or powers appears the world-creating, lawgiving demiurge, the author of our world. He was sometimes identified with the Jewish Yahweh.... [Humans aim for] release of their sparks of spirit for reunion with the true Father.


Chapter 4: "As a young student and teacher of rhetoric he [Augustine] was a Manichean, adherent of the dominant gnostic movement of his time.... Later, when Augustine found himself strongly drawn to Christianity, what held him back from embracing the faith was the reluctance to give up the easygoing life and pleasures....

      "For most Gnostics, sexual indulgence was not so much a sin (a word not often found in Gnostic writings) as a distraction... from the search for gnosis....

      "At one level of thought, all Gnostics were antinomian ... The demiurge's law was a restriction on the freedom which everyone must have to find the way back to ultimate reality.

      "Simon Magus.... taught that the supreme being was androgynous, a male/female pair (Power and Thought) that was really one. He believed that a man's salvation is to be found in becoming like the godhead, by meeting one's twin soul and uniting with her....

       "Identifying the Jewish Yahweh with the creator of this evil world, Ophites regarded the serpent with deepest reverence because he had imparted spiritual knowledge -- gnosis....

       "Belief in transmigration of souls reinforced the duty to flout the commandments of the false god.... Carpocratians taught that individual sparks of spirit would remain enslaved, in incarnation after incarnation, until their enveloping bodies had performed all forbidden acts. The faster souls got through the list of deeds proscribed by worldly powers, the sooner they would escape their rule. ... How did the libertine sects arrive at an attitude toward sexuality so contrary to most religious precepts, and to the main stream of Gnosticism? One answer...'it is impossible for the spiritual element . . . to suffer corruption...."


Chapter 5: "Questioned about his skills... Thomas replied that he was a carpenter and a builder. (Thomas is portrayed in religious art as holding a carpenter's rule and square. [Symbol of Freemasons] In the Middle Ages he became the patron saint of architects, masons, and stone cutters....

      "Another grouping of five qualities of mind...  was to be found among the followers of Mani [Manichean?]... a gnostic religion that combined elements of Buddhism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism....

      "Buddhists hold that nothing exists by itself. 'Things' exist only in relation to other things, in mutual interdependence, all continually acting upon each other in a complex process of causal relationships. Accordingly, we should not think of a continuing, personal Self. What we in our ignorance call the Self is really an interplay of five mental elements and the physical body (known as skandhas ), in temporary conjunctions, constantly changing and interacting.'...


Chapter 7: "Among other unfamiliar motifs is the recurring image of a female element in the godhead, sometimes identifiable as Sophia, sometimes as the Mother...."

Chapter 8: "One unmistakably Gnostic sect survived into the twentieth century.... The Mandeans were a small baptismal community. In their own language, a dialect of East Syriac or Aramaic, their name means 'gnostics'-- 'knowing ones' (manda = gnosis). For them, the ruler of the world of light was the Great Life, from whom a hierarchy of lesser spirits emanated. At the bottom was the creator god. A King of Darkness, a defector from the realm of light, ruled over his own demonic creation of monsters and evil spirits....

      "At the end of the ascent a Keeper of Scales awaited, who weighed its deeds and its grasp of gnosis. If found wanting, souls would be kept in way stations, 'places of detention.' If passed by the Keeper, they attained reunion with the Great Life."

 

2. The Gospel of Thomas

as translated by Thomas O. Lambdin

From THE GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY

    Excerpts from one of several translations of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

"These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.

(1) And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."

(2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."...

(8) And he said, "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."...

(30) Jesus said, "Where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two or one, I am with him."...

(48) Jesus said, "If two make peace with each other in this one house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move Away,' and it will move away."...

(114) Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."

See also The Gnostic Gospel of Philip

 "Christian" Gnosticism | Gnostic Gospel of Judas

How mysticism & the occult are changing the Church

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