Jesus and the Gnostic Tradition

Modern day Christianity is a good example of backsliding from aggressive knowledge acquisition to rigid, structured dogma. During the course of early Christian development, a seismic transition in approach occurred in a blatant attempt to exploit this emotional dependency. This stark transition is clearly apparent in the early history of Christianity's evolution to become a religion.

The central figure in all variations of Christianity is the great teacher Jesus Christ who purportedly traveled around teaching through sermons that promoted doing good deeds and loving each other. He never personally wrote any of these things down, but the things that he said were later recorded by others who had seen him. These second-hand accounts were the only written record of his teachings and even evidence of his existence.

The first organized religion to congeal around this example of Jesus after his death was a variety of forms of Gnosticism. Gnosticism at that time was a thread of spiritual thought running through various iterations in the Mediterranean region espousing a knowledge of the Divine via direct experience. The Gnostics believed that the material world was created by a supreme being, and that a portion of this supreme being was trapped within the human body which could only be liberated by the accumulation of gnosis (aka knowledge).

Gnosticism was a collection of ancient religious ideas and systems that emphasized personal experimentation and practice to acquire knowledge without any reliance on religious dogma. In gnosticism, gnosis is an esoteric mystical knowledge of transcendence that is acquired by way of internal, intuitive means and that salvation is the result of this knowledge of the divine. It was prominent around the Mediterranean basin around 200 CE existing in conjunction with early Christian movements and ideas emerging from the middle stage developments of the Greek philosophy of Plato.

Gnostic writings contain some sayings attributed to Jesus that exhibit similarities with modern Christian canonical sayings. Other of these sayings attributed to Jesus are strikingly different. For example, canonical sayings talk about the coming of an end-time while the Gnostic sayings describe a kingdom of heaven that is already here, not a future event. The Gnostic tradition was a theology of mysticism wherein the kingdom of heaven exists in the here and now. Some believe the Gnostic sayings were recorded nearer to the time of Jesus’s death and are thus closer to the source of the teachings of Jesus.

Perhaps the most dramatic difference between the Gnostic and modern Christians is the perceived path to salvation. The Gnostics believed salvation was earned by diligently seeking knowledge while the modern Christians believe salvation is a reward for dutifully keeping the faith in spite of adversity. Modern Christian scriptures attribute the words ‘seek and ye shall find’ to Jesus. These word seem to more support the Gnostic belief that requires an active process of seeking rather than the passive process of simple believing the things we are told.

This specific change in spiritual approach occurred with the second organized religion based on Jesus when the Roman empire adopted a Christian religion of the own. Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He declared religious tolerance for Christianity in the Roman empire and called the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE which was the first of many effort where the modern Christian beliefs were officially defined hundreds of years after the death of Jesus. Some contend that Constantine’s conversion to Christianity was inspired more by political expediency than spiritual revelation. This proclivity for political expediency still exists in modern Christianity.

These decided revelation by the church became the beliefs that the faithful would be forced to believe. In these newly emerging Christian beliefs, the individual focus on peace, love, and knowledge was shifted in a direction more conducive to the accumulation of power, control, and wealth by the church and its administrators. Groups, such as the Gnostics, responsible for the competing lines of thought were aggressively persecuted to near extinction.

The Cathars were a form of Gnostic belief in 1200 - 1400 CE France that were limited in size because they were not proselytizers. The Cathars were wiped out by French royalty and Catholic Church armies during the Albigensian Crusade. The ruthless brutality of this crusade was captured in the words spoken by a crusade commander when asked by his soldiers how to identify Catholics from Cathars in a town known to be home to both. He replied "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" ("Kill them all, the Lord will recognize His own").

What remained of the Cathars after this Catholic Church crusade were absorbed into some of the early Protestant sects who themselves went on to have a contentious relationship with the Catholic Church. Religious involvement in what should be political affairs of state has a very corrupting influence on that religion, and a religion’s proclivity to proselytize new followers and heavy reliance on dogma are symptoms of this corruption. The objective of politicized religion is an effective marketing strategy for the acquisition and management of follower to the benefit of the religious organization. This politicized religion is a low overhead, high-profit margin business that enjoys the benefit of tax shelter.

My Personal Pursuit of Enlightenment

The concepts of meditation  and yoga are commonly understood in a casual way by pretty much everyone in Western Culture today.  This awareness is largely due to the efforts of the three prominent teacher Vivekananda (1893), Yogananda (1920), and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1959).  These spiritual leaders left a lasting impression on the country in the form of many new seekers looking for this eastern vision of enlightenment and a layer of intermediaries to support these many seekers in lieu of directed access to the guru.  

These intermediaries dispensed the knowledge and techniques in the manner of the sowing of seeds onto the ground (i.e. those who aspire to know).  If the ground was fertile, the seeds would germinate, take root, and grow.  Given the right conditions, these seekers would forge ahead and complete the journey of discovery on their own.  In these very rare cases (most simply give up), the fruit of these efforts is the ‘homegrown’ enlightenment of the pioneering seeker who is largely left to their own devices to fill in the gaps of understanding to complete the journey and interpret the results.

I was one of those new seekers.   I never had any direct connection with my guru.  Rather, I dealt with  intermediaries acting remotely on his behalf to a point in time, and after that, I was totally on my own to sort through these experiences and transitions that I now believe were set in motion by these eastern practices of yoga and meditation.  

At first, I was in the company of many others as I plunged headlong into the commitment to the practice of meditation with the conviction of a person obsessed.  The years passed, and while the general quality of my life was on a steady upward trend since starting meditation, the first decade slipped away without my much desired enlightenment.  I added the practice of the Siddhis to my regime, and remained committed to my new/longer routine.  The trend of steady progress continued as I remained steadfast in my practice.  Friends using the same technique came and went as I remained regular and steadfast, but I continued to diligently plod along.

At some point a few decades later, I was all alone in my immediate world in my pursuit of enlightenment.  I had lost contact with everyone else practicing my particular technique, and in fact, I had little contact with anyone on a similar path of any technique.  I continued to relentlessly forge ahead into I knew not what.  I shared my experiences and practices with no one after I had been set adrift by circumstance.  All the while, knowing that I was slowly but steadily growing and changing.

Finally after 40+ years of regular (obsessively regular) meditation, yoga, and siddha practice, I feel that I have experienced a major shift of consciousness.  There was not much to report in the slow steady changes that preceded this most recent major shift.  This major shift was the quantum leap that created something worth discussing. This discovery is part of an ongoing event, but enough materials have been collected at this point to begin a discussion about my experiences and findings. 

Without any direct contact with teachers, guides, or even many fellow seekers, I have arrived somewhere, but I am not exactly sure where this place is.  It seems pretty significant to me now, but it is not exactly what I had imagined when I started this path 40+ years ago.  In the light of this new clarity, so many things that were so confusing before all seem to make perfect sense to me now. 

This transition appears to have happened across the four primary areas of my being; physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual.  The changes were working in parallel with staggered starting points and different times of completion.  The physical transition was first followed by the intellectual and emotional.  The spiritual was the last to start, and at the time of this writing, these transitions are still ongoing in the form of a cascading series of revelations and insight and physical changes to my body.

Clearly from my new perspective, a state of consciousness does exist that is very consistent with the descriptions in the ancient texts.  I now live it every day.  Maybe this is how it is for everyone as they advance in age, but as I look around me now, that does not appear to be the case for most everyone else that I see.

This place exists deep inside every one of us.  It is a place where there is no fear, no longing or regret.  A place in which there is sanctuary from all the selfish worldly things that otherwise would disturb our sense of peace.  Where we can take comfort in the truth about who we are without worry about what others might think.  A place where there is a fountainhead from which springs the answers to all our questions. 

There is a degree of freedom that comes with these revelations that is greater than anything I could have imagined.  It is a freedom from all the things inside us that stifles our action before we even attempt them.  This freedom comes from a level of honesty that was not possible for me before the transition.  It is a freedom that can only come from being totally honest with yourself.

Time spent in this place is not burdened by things that happened in the past or a fear of what may happen in the future.  Every moment is lived and enjoyed in that very moment.

These blog posts will provide further and more specific details about my western experience of this very eastern concept.  I hope that relating my experiences can be helpful to others, and comments from others about their personal experience would be most welcome.

Is It the Forest or the Trees

The ever increasing degree of specialization in human collective knowledge has resulted in a level of detail that is beyond the comprehension of any one individual. The great early 20th century physicist Erwin Schrödinger lamented this high degree of specialization in his preface to ‘What Is Life?’ as follows:

 
We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge. The very name given to the highest institutions of learning reminds us, that from antiquity to and throughout many centuries the universal aspect has been the only one to be given full credit. But the spread, both in width and depth, of the multifarious branches of knowledge during the last hundred odd years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we are only now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole; but, on the other hand, it has become next to impossible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of it. 

Erwin Schrödinger 'What Is Life?' 1944

The 70+ years since this publication have seen the volumes of human knowledge increased by many orders of magnitude, but a clear understanding of the All-That-Is remains a mystery.  Perhaps even more of a mystery, now that it is buried in all this newly discovered detail.  What is really need to 'welding together the sum total of all that is known into a whole'.

Some are convinced that the whole can only be understood by understanding all the parts. For the All-That-Is, understanding all the parts to understand the whole is beyond the range of human understanding.

There is a commonly understood notion that someone can become so involved in the details of a particular problem that they lose sight of the broader situation as a whole. In so doing, the big picture view of this more general situation is lost in the mass of details. By analogy, they can’t see the forest for the trees. Such is certainly the case in the search for the ultimate truth.

Take for example an actual forest, the level of detail to be considered is very considerable. There is botany for the plants, and zoology for the animals. There are matters of geology and hydrology in addition to climate and . Science has long since recognized this dilemma for real forest, and they have created a higher level of study that extracts bits and pieces from these other masses of detail to create ecology.

The unimaginable levels of detail are much like the Sirens described in Greek mythology who with their enchanting music lured passing sailors to shipwreck on their rocky island. There is something similarly enticing about these extreme levels of detail that many seekers of truth cannot resist. They are lured by them into an inescapable, complex collection of information that smothers and ultimately consumes them.

Resist the alluring temptation of the incredible layers of detail.

Evolution in Western Religious Thought

There has been some historical intellectual consideration of the root source of all things and the possibility of some intelligent creator throughout the course of all humanity, but to connect with any type of unbiased serious intellectual consideration, one has to find a time prior to the corrupting influence of all the politically inspired religions hat have been created along the way. To reach this point of intellectual consideration, one has to look way back to a time when all this hype and hyperbole were not so extreme. In Western thinking, most of this clear consideration goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks, but a few things such as panpsychism actually preceded even that.

Thales of Miletus in the tradition of panpsychism was one of the first to explain the vast diversity in nature as deriving from a single ultimate substance instead of the more traditional use of imagination driven mythological devices. Later, Anaxagoras presented the concept of a universal mind in which he proposed the power of this mind in organisms that enables them to extract nourishment from surrounding substances. Anaxagoras’ concept of mind (nous) and awareness (gnó̱si̱) were believed to be more widely distributed than just humans. He felt that all living things exhibited these characteristics in their interactions with their surroundings, and he further speculated this primal substance of consciousness existed in both animate and inanimate things.

During the first and second century CE, a variety of ancient religious and philosophical ideas began to be fused together under the modern name of gnosticism. Gnosticism is the conflation of ideas from various Greek philosophers steeped in the belief of panpsychism and the emerging teachings of Jesus. The fundamental tenet of all these various flavors of gnosticism is that a person in this material world exists as a divine spark trapped in the human body that can only be liberated by gnosis (aka spiritual knowledge) acquired through direct experience. In gnosticism, one achieves salvation by acquiring correct gnosis (knowledge).

Later, the Christian religion evolution took a radical departure from its original gnostic approach after the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine to Christianity. The influence of Constantine refocused the religion away from spiritual revelation of knowledge to something much more politically expedient for him. In this more political approach, follower were aggressively ‘marketed’ into a religion where the faithful were forced to believe what they were told. This new dogma shifted from the individual focus on peace, love, and knowledge to something more conducive to the accumulation of power, control, and wealth by the church and its administrators.

The point where this power shifting dogma occurred is where everything suddenly gets way more complicated. Up until this point, everyone was free to consider the topic of a conscious creator without worrying about infringement on someone’s intellectual property rights to the Divine. Before this Christian self-proclamation as the only access point to knowledge about the conscious creator, no one owned sole source access to the creator being. Needless to say, consideration of the topic got weird at this point, and these notions about a creator took a turn for the worse.

The intellectual openness of the Enlightenment undermined the oppressive authority of monarchies and the Christian church and paved the way for the political and religious revolutions to come. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, and constitutional government wherein the church and state are separated.

Also during this Enlightenment, a new religious philosophical position of Deism emerged that rejected this Christian revelation as a source of all religious knowledge and asserted that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to establish the existence of a conscious creator of the Universe. In something of a return to the original Christian gnosticism, Deists believed answering the question about the existence of a conscious creator can be based on reason and ordinary experience of nature which they in turn called natural theology.

Deist philosophers were not the only ones to reject the Christian revelation as a source of knowledge and to appeal only to the truths that could be established by reason alone. Beyond deism, many others became so disenchanted with this oppressive Christian revelation rhetoric that they became full fledged intellectual deniers. They resist any possibility that such a creator might exist even in the face of certain things that defied their materialistic view of reality such as their very own mysterious consciousness.

In Search of the Ultimate Truth

The concept of an ultimate truth that explains all the happenings in our world and more importantly in our lives is a very intriguing possibility.  Its existence is a mythology to most, but some few get so caught up in this intrigue that they spend their whole lives in search of this wonderful possibility. 

In eastern culture, there is a very specific concept for which there was no direct parallel in western culture. This concept is the belief that there exists a state of human consciousness that transcends suffering and longing and enables the liberation from the cycle of rebirth and death of the individual who attains this level of consciousness.

 Eastern cultures have words like nirvana, moksha, or satori that accurately expressed this concept.  In the English, language this concept was initially translated to the word enlightenment. Today, nirvana has been assimilated into the English lexicon, but the earlier association of this concept to the English word enlightenment has stuck. 

This association by translation has over time actually endowed the word enlightenment with all these higher meanings from these eastern words to the point that it is frequently used to denote these spiritual concepts without further qualification. In the context of this discussion, enlightenment is considered very specifically to be the development of a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of one’s Self (i.e. who/what you are) and the reality surrounding that Self (i.e. what it is and how you relate to it) to the point that one attains this liberation. 

 As human beings, we are self-awareness and have the ability to think, reason, and feel great passion about things. By virtue of these two things, we are able to experience great pleasure and happiness, or conversely, they can also cause us to feel great pain and sorrow. In our lives, we attempt to string together a series of events that optimizes the pleasure and happiness experiences over those that bring pain and sorrow, but this simple life mission proves to be extremely difficult for most of us. 

Most would agree that the gift of life is a great blessing. It is also a compelling mystery whose true meaning appears to be very difficult to understand, but the meaning of life is not really hidden from us. We make it difficult to understand by virtue of the many veils of illusion that we create for ourselves in the form of the many things that we choose to believe about our individual reality. 

We have no choice in this matter of belief. Everyone has to believe some things, but this simple process of believing is a lot harder than it seems. A belief that is assumed correctly with all due diligence and care will eventually evolve into something that is known dispelling the illusion of mystery, but much more commonly an incorrect belief is casually adopted that only creates illusion and the appearance of greater mystery. 

It takes great patience and much thought to decipher the real truth about life from the information that is available to us, but it is worth the effort for it is this Truth that will truly set you free. This collection of thoughts across these blog posts offers some critical observations relevant to some key questions in the life experience. These thoughts are being humbly offered to all fellow seekers of this ultimate Truth for their consideration and independent verification as we are all here just looking for something credible to believe.

Homegrown Enlightenment: Universal Truth

The world in which we live is filled with all sorts of natural distractions. Driven by our inherent thirst for happiness, we plunge headlong into all these distractions hoping somehow to emerge with a sense of contentment that never seems to fully develop. We are trapped in our recurring cycle of desire/action/impression that loops unceasingly on and on as we try to content ourselves with these worldly delights without ever finding a lasting peace.

In stark contrast, Eastern philosophies describe a special sense of contentment as an enlightened state of mind that can only be reached with the regular and prolonged practice of correct meditative techniques. They consider the human conscious experience to be an ongoing journey of self-discovery to very specifically achieve this state of enlightenment, and various visiting Eastern mystics have intrigued some Western aspirants with claims that these same Eastern techniques can be integrated into a Western lifestyle.

After 50 years of focused practice of these Eastern conscious technologies, this Homegrown Enlightenment series is a findings report of how these practices have reshaped my Western perspective of reality and overall understanding of the human conscious experience. Universal Truth introduces the concept of a human conscious experience derived from this Eastern perspective.

Central to this understanding is an elaboration of the concept of truth based on the Eastern Doctrine of Two Truths. The first truth is the relative sense of personal truth that we use to conduct the affairs of our lives. A key component in our personal truth are those placeholder things that we believe to be true. These things believed carry an uncertain burden that can become the source of the illusions and personal bondage that obstruct our personal freedom. The other truth is the Universal Truth that explains the never-changing absolute mysterious foundation that exists as the source of all things.

This book exposes a reality perspective that sets the stage for the further discovery of this Universal Truth that can actually set someone free. 

 

Click to preview book.

 

Homegrown Enlightenment

 

For most of these Western converts, the practice of these techniques was a fashionable at the time trend that quickly faded from their interest. For some others, practice of these techniques would become a passion that would persist for the rest of their lives. This dedicated few who were left in the wake of these visiting Eastern gurus did not withdraw from their active lifestyles to undertake their spiritual journeys. These seekers on their own custom tailored their Western lifestyle to incorporate as much of the Eastern knowledge and the practice of these techniques as possible.  

These individual efforts were largely at the discretion of their own personal intuition and their personal drive and desire to be enlightened. These custom tailored execution strategies would ultimately became something of a personal homegrown enlightenment experiment for each of these many independent seekers that was orchestrated and executed separately by each individual. These homegrown enlightenment experiments were cobbled together to address the personal challenges and dilemmas that are inherent in this process of pursuing enlightenment for that individual without the direct support of a guru.

These Western orphaned seekers found themselves left largely in charge of the logistics and tactics to be used in the execution of these strategic techniques and knowledge in the context of their Western lifestyles. Each individual seeker used their personal intuition as a guide in lieu of learned elders to address current and anticipate future requirements to facilitate their effort, but more importantly, they became responsible for the interpretation of the results of all this effort which would become the biggest challenge for the homegrown efforts.

My Personal Experience

My lifelong path of meditation and self study was set in motion when in deference to several tenets of my Western upbringing, I was formally introduced to the technique of meditation and became one of these Western seeker orphans. Formally introduced means instructed properly in the context of an initiation puja, and not just casually informed by some passing acquaintance to sit quietly and think of nothing.

The effect of this meditative transcendental consciousness on me was immediate from the first moment of repeating the mantra and entering this new meditative conscious state. It was apparent that this experience was something significant that had been missing in all my previous life experiences without my even having known that something was missing. My initial experience with this new transcendental consciousness inspired in me a commitment to this new practice of meditation with the conviction of a person obsessed.

Over the next couple of days, my teacher gave a few more instructions about the techniques and its enlightenment goal before disappearing from my life forever. Before leaving, they conveyed a clear understanding of how to properly perform the meditation technique and a brief theoretical explanation of what to expect over the long term. As the years passed, the general quality of my life experience was on a steady upward trend seemingly the result of this meditation, and this trend of steady progress inspired me to find the time in my daily schedule to accommodate this meditation practice.

Like many of the other Western converts, certain promised times to complete this quest for enlightenment were not consistent with my actual experience. My teachers assured me that regular practice of the technique would result in enlightenment in 8-10 years, but the first decade passed without this major shift in consciousness. The years just kept rolling by without this promised sustained experience of enlightenment, but my commitment to the process never wavered.

Over time, I gradually drifted away from the organization that had developed around this technique. Clearly to me, there were benefits from using these techniques so I continued their practice in what became a persistent journey of self-discovery in my obsessive pursuit of this mysterious enlightenment. Without much contact with others on a similar path, I shared my experiences and practices with no one after having been set adrift by circumstance. All the while, aware of the fact that something inside me was slowly but steadily growing and changing.

Final Revelations

Finally after decades of going down this twisting path, I did finally experience a major shift in my personal conscious experience. Without any direct contact with teachers, guides, or even many fellow seekers, I found myself in what appear to be new state of consciousness that seems pretty significantly different and remarkable, but it is not exactly what I had so naively imagined when starting down this path all those years ago.

With this shift in consciousness, there came an incredible new clarity of thinking accompanied by certain positive changes to my physical body. From this new perspective, there arose a profound line of thinking that began to automatically unfold before me, and everything subsequently began to make perfect sense after a cascading sequence of revelations and insights eliminated all previous confusion. Above all, there came a growing sense of personal liberation that I never could have imagined before experiencing it.

These revelations about the great mystery of life continue to unfold before me. Everyday was an ‘aha’ moment that is perhaps building to some further ultimate ‘aha’ moment that is yet to come. This staggering sense of amazement inspired me to write these things down in an attempt to facilitate my personal assimilation of all this new knowledge into a single coherent piece, but this process of writing also seemed to stimulate the flow of new knowledge.

Was this transition finally the long sought after enlightenment? That possibility seemed so incredibly unbelievable after all that time has passed, and it also seems arrogant and presumptive to make such a call for one’s self. Suffice it to say that I am a long way down a path that I have never taken before so I don’t really know where it has taken me, but the fact of the matter has become that question really didn’t seem to matter anymore. I am where I am in what appears to be a truly remarkable mental space.

Report of Findings

The unvarnished truth presented in this discussion could make some feel uncomfortable because it might conflict with some of their passionately held beliefs. Specifically, those individuals with a closed mind who feel obsessively compelled to hold onto their personal particular set of belief illusions. These illusion fixated individuals are not likely going to appreciated being confronted with some of this very raw truth. Only those who truly dare to pursue this mythical Universal Truth should venture down this particulate spiritual rabbit-hole.

This journey of spiritual self-discovery has become the longest-standing single endeavor that is still ongoing of my life. It has been conducted in near total solitude known only to me for nearly fifty years. This book and others that might follow in this Homegrown Enlightenment series have been inspired by this incredible fifty year journey on this twisting path experiencing various adventures along the way, but it is not a memoir recollection of the journey itself remarkable though that has been.

This Homegrown Enlightenment series is an accurate as my words can convey description of the wonderful mental space that this journey has inspired in me. The opinions expressed here are being offered as food for thought in the personal discovery process of others. They are not things to be blindly accepted as beliefs. Rather, there are offered for consideration by those others who are also trying to sort through all the same challenges to get to their own personal understanding of the truth about the reality of our situation.

This book and any others that may follow in this series are collectively a final report of this my 50 year long homegrown enlightenment experiment. For me, they expose a very special truth about our lives and the surrounding reality that is fixed and permanent. This collection of knowledge has proved itself to be the key to my as my Universal Truth. Maybe it can help others to find their own personal sense of liberation too.