Gnostic Bytes

[dianna]

Thought I would start a thread on Gnosticism --- will kick it off with this


Coffee, Cigarettes & Gnosis


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fIZR14eOHw&feature=share&list=TLGiKEug7koGgoKgmAfhLAnHyXhbkvdL1a

[dianna]

Stephan Hoeller tells us that noted gnostic scholar, David Rodier, states that the three greatest works of gnostic literature today are "Nag Hamadi Codices" "Alice in Wonderland" and "Lord of the Rings" -- I found this fascinating (not sure if I would agree, but its worth thinking about)

Stephan A. Hoeller - J.R.R. Tolkien's Gnosis for our Day


http://youtu.be/xbuYlasPA7E

[dianna]

Alice in Wonderland


Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine,
it is stranger than we can imagine – Sir Arthur Eddington.

Much has been written about Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass. Suffice to say that we have more here than just stories for children. The books are full of ancient symbology. (Take, for example, the symbolism of the ‘White Rabbit,’ with its connotations of purity, spiritual awakening and new life. Then there’s the ‘golden key,’ and so on. I must stop there for the time being. I digress.)
Before I get started—yes, I know, I already have—here (courtesy of the BFI National Archive) is a 2-minute selection of clips from the first-ever film version of Lewis Carroll’s tale Alice in Wonderland. Made in 1903—just 37 years after Lewis Carroll wrote his novel and 8 years after the birth of cinema—this film was the longest film produced in England at that time:


http://youtu.be/WQDyshif6v0

Lewis Carroll—real name, Charles Dodgson (pictured below left)—had a great interest in the ‘occult’ and, in particular, in what is sometimes referred to as the ‘Ancient Wisdom’ (or the ‘perennial philosophy’), and what we have in Alice is a literary outworking of the archetypal story of the hero’s journey, as well as the gnostic redeemer myth, and the allegory of the descent and ascent of the human soul.
One version of the Gnostic redeemer myth goes like this. Sophia is said to have accidentally created the physical world but, in so doing, she becomes trapped and unable to return to the heavens. We, too—along with our heroine Alice who falls into a rabbit-hole—are trapped in time and space. In that sense—and that sense alone—we are ‘fallen’ souls. That is the price one pays for ‘spirit’ descending into ‘matter.’
Perhaps more significantly, we are trapped by the delusion of ‘self,’ that is, the misbelief that there is, at the core of our being, a separate, independent, unchanging ‘self’ or ‘personality.’ Alice learns, in the course of her journey (the ‘fall’ or ‘descent’ into Wonderland) that there is no such ‘self.’ Take, for example, this piece of wisdom: ‘I can’t go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then.’ All though the Alice books we see Alice changing in ‘size,’ which is a way of saying that our sense of self (the thousands of ever waxing and waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ in us) is constantly changing.

http://beforeitsnews.com/mediadrop/uploads/2013/38/a8e9861f98be89675093a9d2e1e2bc351b979a22.jpg

Carroll makes it clear that there is a ‘way out’ of existential confusion. There is a ‘golden key.’ We must discard the whole idea of ‘self’ or ‘ego.’ Remember the Cheshire Cat? The Cat vanishes, leaving nothing but a grin. What a wonderful image of the illusory nature of the ‘self’ as well as the impermanence of all things! No wonder the great physicist, astronomer and mathematician Sir James Jeans wrote, ‘The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.’

http://beforeitsnews.com/mediadrop/uploads/2013/38/1ed5056447d94a43a9383a41d92f2c1f94da9816.gif

Back to the ever-vanishing Cheshire Cat. (I will be like the proverbial kid in the lolly shop in this blog. Forgive me.) It is the Cat—a symbol of divine wisdom in Ancient Egypt—who tells Alice to go to the Queen. Good advice, this Cat gives. Now, remember when Alice plays croquet with the Queen of Hearts (the ‘Red Queen’)? Croquet—with flamingos for mallets and hedgehogs for balls. Quaint. Well, the Queen is in all of us. (No, not in that sense. Sorry.) The Queen has that mentality held by so many of us—she must always win or succeed, no matter what. She gets terribly angry even at the thought of ‘losing’ the game. That is why the Queen’s playing card guards make sure the Queen’s ball goes through the hoops every time. That is the way the ego-self ‘works’—self-will run riot.
The Queen is our ego-self, and our identification with that ‘self’ as being supposedly who we really are. Later, there is the trial—to determine who stole the tarts from the King and Queen—and Alice learns a very important spiritual truth. ‘You’re nothing but a pack of cards,’ Alice accuses the characters, who rise up and fly at her. Wow! Alice has a spiritual epiphany of sorts, and comes to know the truth nature of existence—namely, everything is impermanent.

When Alice first meets the Queen, she says to the Queen, ‘I’ve lost my way.’ The Queen retorts, ‘Your way? … All the ways round here belong to me!’ Ha! The tragedy of self-obsession and self-absorption. When the Queen trips over her own mallet—such is the nature of self-centredness—she must always blame someone else (in this case, Alice). Alice sees through the nature of the Queen, and shrinks back to normal size. Ego deflation at great depth has occurred. That is always the essential prerequisite for true spiritual growth and development. It is the hallmark of the ‘conversion’ or ‘initiation’ experience. Alice finds herself in a maze. She runs and runs, and eventually sees a tiny door. The ‘door’ is always tiny. She looks through the keyhole—no matter how far we have fallen, we can always get a glimpse of the way out—and sees … herself … asleep under a tree. She hears a familiar voice calling her name. She opens her eyes. She ‘awakens.’ What powerful imagery! The ego-self has gone. In its place, there is the authentic self—the person that each of us really is.

When Alice first falls into the rabbit-hole, there is darkness. Naturally. Cupboards, bookshelves, pictures, lamps and mirrors all flat past Alice as she falls. These things represent everything that holds us back. If we would travel far, we must travel light. Material and earthly things—and even our intellect and sense of ‘self’—hold us back. We must let go of all these things if we want to ‘see’ and ‘know’ things as they really are. Like Alice, we must remain forever ‘curious,’ for curiosity—one of the important features of a ‘mindful’ mind—is essential if we would see things choicelessly as they really are.

http://beforeitsnews.com/mediadrop/uploads/2013/38/58ad3da0a299a40133738f9e3803c8a7272a1b27.jpg


There is so much in Alice of lasting importance. Remember the Mad Hatter’s tea-party, attended also by the March Hare and the Doormouse? They are celebrating an ‘un-birthday,’ which is any day that’s not one’s birthday. What a powerful image of the nature of unreality (that is, the illusory nature of existence). An un-birthday is when nothing happens, but nothingness—that is, ‘no-thing-ness’—is everything! When we come to know the no-thing-ness of all reality, we can truly say we have come to know the Self—that is, the very self-livingness of life—as one.
And what of ‘time’? The watch-carrying White Rabbit provides a launching pad for an exploration of the nature of time and eternity. ‘Time’ and ‘space’—which are really one—are no more than mediums in which all things exist. Life itself is timeless and spaceless, with everything contained within ‘the Now.’ All duration—or time—is total and complete in the Now. There is an ‘eternal’ quality about the Now. It is forever new.

And what of the ‘path’? Well, there are lots of paths in Alice, but none of them really lead anywhere. Funny, that. The paths taught by so-called experts—the priests, teachers and gurus—are not the true path. They represent other persons’ versions or ‘understanding’ of reality, and they are of no use to us. At one point—one of many such points—Alice has had enough of Wonderland, and wants to go ‘home.’ However, she can’t find her way out. She finds a path to follow, but a dog with a broom comes along and sweeps the path away. Ha! Isn’t that always the case? But that’s a good thing, really.

Alice then hears the voice of the Cheshire Cat, telling her to go to the Queen. The Cat refers to a ‘short cut,’ and it is that which I have referred to above—namely, the letting go of the notion of self altogether, with all that entails. That is indeed the short cut, and mindfulness is a wonderful means of freeing oneself from the bondage of self. In a very profound sense there is no path, for a path presupposes that there is a distance or separation between the person that each of us is and reality (or truth) itself. There is no such distance or separation—except the illusion of self, which we must eliminate. The Queen constantly shrieks, ‘Off with her head!’ However, it is the Queen’s head—the ego self—which must be topped.

Alice learns that not only is there no ‘path’ as such—except the ‘short cut’ referred to above—there are also no ‘rules.’ Alice’s encounters demonstrate that. Words tend to mean whatever we want them to mean. Yes, we invariably get lost in our own self-constructed mental prisons. However, as Dr Norman Vincent Peale used to say, there is in each of us a spiritual giant which is always trying to burst its way out of the prison we have made for it. This spiritual giant—as I see it—is not something ‘supernatural’ (whatever that means) but nothing other than the recognition that ‘self cannot change self.’


Along the ‘way’ Alice finds some spiritual nourishment in some bits of mushroom. Love it! Then there’s the associated Zen kōan in the form of the Caterpillar’s advice about the mushroom, ‘One side will make you grown bigger and the other side will make you grow smaller.’ Alice asks, ‘One side of what? The other side of what?” ‘Of the mushroom,’ says the Caterpillar.

That reminds me of the old Buddhist story, ‘You are on the Other Side.’ Reason, intellect, and book knowledge—not unimportant things by any means—are not the ‘short cut’ described by the Cheshire Cat. Indeed, they are hindrances to spiritual growth, as are all the things that the world deems important. The latter—along with those who seek worldly fame and success—are not only deluded, they’re ‘nothing but a pack of cards.’

[dianna]

The Nag Hammadi Library

http://gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

http://www.gnosis.org/images/codices.jpg


About the Nag Hammadi Library (The Nag Hammadi Scriptures)

The Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient codices containing over fifty texts, was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. This immensely important discovery includes a large number of primary "Gnostic Gospels" -- texts once thought to have been entirely destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define "orthodoxy" -- scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, and the Gospel of Truth.

The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library, completed in the 1970's, has provided impetus to a major re-evaluation of early Christian history and the nature of Gnosticism. Readers unfamiliar with this history may wish to read an excerpt from Elaine Pagels' excellent popular introduction to the Nag Hammadi texts, The Gnostic Gospels. We also offer another brief Introduction to Gnosticism and the Nag Hammadi Library.




Texts in the Collection:

All the texts discovered at Nag Hammadi are available in the Gnostic Society Library; they are indexed here in alphabetical order, and by their location in the original codices. A subject categorized list of the writings is also given, below. You may search the entire collection of texts for keywords or phrases using the search form.

We have a special collections of resources dealing with two particularly important texts, the Gospel of Thomas, and The Secret Book (Apocryphon) of John. Several introductory lectures on the Nag Hammadi materials are provided, below.

Many of the major writings in the Nag Hammadi collection have more than one English translation; where more than one translation is made available, we have listed the translators' names in parenthesis below the name of the text. Texts marked with the {*} have more than one version extant within the Nag Hammadi codices; often these were used conjointly by the translators to provide the single text presented here. All of these translations are based on the work originally sponsored by the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California.

The International Edition of The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (published in 2007) provides greatly improved translations relative to the original versions provided here, and we highly recommended you acquire a copy.
Other important primary Gnostic texts -- writings discovered in the century before the recovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, including texts like the Gospel of Mary -- are cataloged in the Classical Gnostic Scriptures section of the The Gnostic Society Library. We also have a comprehensive collection of resources focused on Valentinus and the Valentinian Tradition.

If you would like to look at the ancient manuscripts themselves, digital images of the original Nag Hammadi Codices are available online at the Claremont Colleges Digital Library.


An Overview of the Nag Hammadi Scriptures

When analyzed according to subject matter, there are six separate major categories of writings collected in the Nag Hammadi codices:

Writings of creative and redemptive mythology, including Gnostic alternative versions of creation and salvation: The Apocryphon of John; The Hypostasis of the Archons; On the Origin of the World; The Apocalypse of Adam; The Paraphrase of Shem. (For an in-depth discussion of these, see the Archive commentary on Genesis and Gnosis.)

Observations and commentaries on diverse Gnostic themes, such as the nature of reality, the nature of the soul, the relationship of the soul to the world: The Gospel of Truth; The Treatise on the Resurrection; The Tripartite Tractate; Eugnostos the Blessed; The Second Treatise of the Great Seth; The Teachings of Silvanus; The Testimony of Truth.

Liturgical and initiatory texts: The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth; The Prayer of Thanksgiving; A Valentinian Exposition; The Three Steles of Seth; The Prayer of the Apostle Paul. (The Gospel of Philip, listed under the sixth category below, has great relevance here also, for it is in effect a treatise on Gnostic sacramental theology).

Writings dealing primarily with the feminine deific and spiritual principle, particularly with the Divine Sophia: The Thunder, Perfect Mind; The Thought of Norea; The Sophia of Jesus Christ; The Exegesis on the Soul.

Writings pertaining to the lives and experiences of some of the apostles: The Apocalypse of Peter; The Letter of Peter to Philip; The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles; The (First) Apocalypse of James; The (Second) Apocalypse of James, The Apocalypse of Paul.

Scriptures which contain sayings of Jesus as well as descriptions of incidents in His life: The Dialogue of the Saviour; The Book of Thomas the Contender; The Apocryphon of James; The Gospel of Philip; The Gospel of Thomas.

This leaves a small number of scriptures of the Nag Hammadi Library which may be called "unclassifiable." It also must be kept in mind that the passage of time and translation into languages very different from the original have rendered many of these scriptures abstruse in style. Some of them are difficult reading, especially for those readers not familiar with Gnostic imagery, nomenclature and the like. Lacunae are also present in most of these scriptures -- in a few of the texts extensive sections have been lost due to age and deterioration of the manuscripts.

The most readily comprehensible of the Nag Hammadi scriptures is undoubtedly The Gospel of Thomas, with The Gospel of Philip and the The Gospel of Truth as close seconds in order of easy comprehension. (These texts were all also thankfully very well preserved and have few lacunae.) There are various translations of most of these scriptures available; the most complete being the one volume collection The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, edited by Marvin Meyer, and published in 2007. Translations provided here are based on the earlier edition, The Nag Hammadi Library in English, edited by James Robinson, published in 1990.