12 Sep
Dark Gnosis?
There was a damn good discussion tonight on the PTG forum about very real yet ephemeral occurrence that we’ve all experienced as we tread the path. I thought it was suitable for memorialization here.
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Heather wrote about a dark side to gnosis:
Does Gnosis have a dark side? Can one feel completely at home in Gnosticism and then suddenly become uprooted more than ever before? Does this mean that it was all a lie? Does this mean I really just don’t get it? Is it about a continuous cycle of trusting one’s self, interpretations, and intuition only to discover I know nothing?
If so, I guess it leads to true understanding but there is some comfort in one’s delusions.
-Heather
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I replied in part like this:
We have all experienced the dissolution of a brilliant shining moment of illumination. You catch hold of an underlying truth in a very irrational, intuitive way that is deeply subjective and personal, and then once you return to commerce in the world of forms that moment seems to have been a phantasm, a fever dream that is trumped by the cold concrete world that we have come to accept as reality.
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vee added this important note:
But (sic.) maybe also, don’t mistake ‘being troubled’ for ‘darkness’.
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Paying bills, commuting to work, and eating fast food all feel real. They are tangible experiences out in the objective world outside of our heads. We don’t have to believe in them, they assert themselves. This gnosis is a mercurial phenomenon that happens in moments set apart from the rest of life and they are easily lost if we fail to place stock in them.
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This is best described in the Hymn of the Pearl when the protagonist who is in search of a great treasure completely forgets his mission and his identity as soon as he mingles with the Egyptians and eats and drinks with them. Immediately he becomes sleepy and lost in a hazy amnesia.
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Fortunately, a messenger from his royal pleromic realm comes and awakens him to what he must do while still in the world of forms. This is a comforting aspect of the story. Even when we feel like we’re in the darkness, the gnosis can still come and shake us out of our slumber.