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Gnosis
and the Metaphysical Left
Precisely because the
Gnostic Way is a total view of life, Gnostics maintain that religious
convictions are a person’s personal business. The Gnostic does not seek to
‘convert’ anyone. They know no one code of worship, no one exclusive creed,
no one religion, is suitable for every human being on the planet. Each person
should follow a religion in keeping with their inner nature. They must find the
faith that resonates with their interior condition. One 3rd century
Gnostic teacher observed, “Each person will see the Lord in his own way, not
all alike.” The Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Beghards and Beguines, the English Ranters, the central European Taborites, the Russian Khlysti and Skoptsi, are just some of numerous Gnostic schools, sects and communities who held to a vision of the ‘new beginning’, the return of the ‘lost’ Golden Age when Justice and Truth would once again reign. Following the practice of the disciples of Jesus, Gnostic schools were ‘communistic’ or ‘communitarian’ in outlook, maintaining that except for small personal items, all things should be held in common. People should give up the idea of ‘mine and thine’, for this was a relic of the Mosaic Law. Their economic creed was, "Let us have one purse". Some 18th and 19th century radical Gnostic teachers, rejecting the hypocrisy and deceit of the false Christian churches, even claimed godlessness was more acceptable than worship of an oppressive alien god. Disbelief and atheism being far more honest than false religion. Others found it necessary to conceal ancient truths within existing popular religious institutions. Thus a Gnostic could outwardly affirm Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, while preserving the ageless wisdom in secret. Both atheism and existential adherence to the dominant religious creed were valid options for Gnostic pneumatics who through initiation had made their interior abode in the “palace of the king” (as one text explains). By breaking with worldly illusions, the Gnostic lived in communion with a spiritual realm through whose gates they had passed. Anchored in the Supreme Truth, no longer subject to mundane reality, their inner orientation allowed them to assume whatever ‘outer garment’ was necessary to realise their mission. The world of material affairs may look lowly indeed. But we are in physical human bodies dwelling in a material world. We have made this earth our arena of battle. The Gnostic cannot separate thought from action. As one of the world’s oldest scriptures, Bhagavad Gita, declares: “He who does not, in this world, help to turn the wheel thus set in motion, is evil in his nature, sensual in his delight, and he O Partha (Arjuna) lives in vain.” Gnostics are revolutionaries. Laws, confessions and worldly powers are nothing but a sham and an oppressive trap, the perpetuation of age old deceit. Man in his alienation here on earth is enslaved to a false image of deity. He worships a god in his own ‘all too human’ image, finding himself in bondage to this malevolent force. To be truly sensitive, observant or intelligent under such a blanket of existential oppression is to be subversive. Gnostics are ‘seditious’ of all worldly institutions because they know the craftsman of this earthly world of phenomena is their Adversary. The Nag Hammadi texts show how the first and second century Gnostics were consistently unremitting in their opposition to the despotic anthropomorphic god. They scoffed at this crude and vain god of the ignorant Christians and Jews, who supposedly rewarded good and punished misdeeds like a worldly potentate. They openly condemned the Old Testament god as a bloodthirsty, tribal deity. Centuries later the Russian ‘godless revolutionist’, Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), came to a similar conclusion as the early Gnostics. He writes in God and the State: Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty — Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve….He generously placed at their disposal the whole earth, with all its fruits and animals, and set but a single limit to complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge. Jehovah, declare the Gnostics, is in fact hostile to their “unknown Father”. The Prophet Mani, drawing on Gnostic Christian tradition, scandalised the ignorant Christians by revealing that Jesus the Christ actually emancipated our first parents by giving them gnosis (knowledge) of the good God. The Christ liberated Adam and Eve by showing them the true nature of the world and its evil ruler. In the story of Eden, the snake also symbolises man’s first Initiator, the one who sets himself against the authoritarian world order, the rebel who reveals to man the secrets of his birth and destiny. Bakunin’s revolutionary outlook was also apocalyptic. Like the Gnostics he saw a new beginning only after the fiery transformation of existing society. He spoke of making a “gigantic bonfire of London, Paris, and Berlin,” echoing the final cataclysm eagerly anticipated by the first Christians. To Bakunin belong the words, “the passion for destruction is a creative passion.” Only after destruction will the new world be born. For then, Bakunin declares: There will be a qualitative transformation, a new living, life-giving revelation, a new heaven and a new earth, a young and mighty world in which all our present dissonances will be resolved into a harmonious whole.1 One of Mikhail Bakunin’s friends was the German composer Richard Wagner, who discussed with him plans for mobilising art in the service of political revolution. Wagner’s music dramas are rich in Gnostic themes and Templar imagery. Bakunin’s call for political and economic revolution, imbued as it was with a vision of apocalyptic cleansing and human transformation, appealed to Wagner’s sensitive soul. In an unjust world only revolution could regenerate humanity. In a dramatic speech given in 1848, Wagner announced: God will give us light to
find the rightful law to put [the revolution] into practice. And like a hideous
nightmare will this demoniac idea of Money vanish from us, with all its
loathsome retinue of open and secret usury, paper-juggling, percentage and
banker’s speculations. That will be the full emancipation of the human race,
that will be the fulfilment of Christ’s pure teaching. Western Christianity, by identifying Jehovah as the Supreme Being, took on his characteristics. The whole bloody history of European Christendom can be understood from this perspective. By taking over the Old Testament god of power and ruthlessness the Church found justification for violence, robbery and the subjugation of all ‘non-believers’. In Wagner’s opinion: The singular circumstance
that Christianity might be regarded as sprung from Judaism, placed the requisite
bugbear in the Church’s hands. The tribal god of a petty nation had promised
his people eventual rulership of the whole world and all that lives and moves
therein, if only they adhered to laws whose strictest following would keep them
barred against all other nations of the earth…. Money is the jealous one God of Israel, beside which no other God may stand. Money dethrones all the gods of man and turns them into a commodity. Money is the universal, independently constituted value of all things. It has, therefore, deprived the whole world, both the world of man and nature, of its own value. Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and his being. This alien being rules over him and he worships it. One god Jehovah, the demiurge condemned by Gnostics, now takes the form of Money Power. The worship of a jealous god required a certain outlook, so too capitalism promotes a socially corrosive mentality. Just as the Gnostics said the demiurge’s world will inevitably give way to a new era, the transformation of all life, so Marx predicted: that through the overthrow
of the existing social order, through the communist revolution, i.e. the
abolishment of private property, this power — the alienating power of money
— will be dissolved, and then the emancipation of every single individual will
be achieved to the same extent that history transforms itself into world
history. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, shows this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonism. Society as a whole is splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat. Later the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin developed the concept of the revolutionary vanguard, a minority of dedicated strugglers who, as the consciousness of the proletariat, would lead the revolution and the construction of a new society. Within the Gnostic worldview, the pneumatics (spiritual humanity) possess spiritual wisdom and are governed by the finest aspirations. A small minority, they might even be understood as the most fully aware, the leadership of psychic mankind. Heralds of the End and of the new life to come. Basing his analysis principally on the growth of European Christendom, Karl Marx concluded that “religion is the opium of the people.” He did not believe that God had created man, but rather that man had created God or gods. We are reminded of the words of the Gnostic Gospel of Philip: “God created man…men create God. That is the way it is in the world — men make gods and worship their creation.” Marx showed how the ruling class used religion as an instrument of control and enslavement. The world, Marx argued, existed independently of man and operated according to its own laws. The neo-Gnostic poet William Blake (1757-1827) described the god who abandons the creation once he has set it in motion, leaving it to continue on its course, as the ignorant demiurge. History may be seen as man’s impetuous struggle to improve on the demiurge’s imperfect, woeful creation. In his blindness, all man’s efforts to free himself of the natural world's shackles only made them more subtle, yet stronger. For the Gnostic this failed world contains in its essence something of the superior world. Light, trapped in darkness, must be liberated. The Gnostic takes on the monumental task of purifying the world, transmuting all areas of existence. He must break the bonds of the human condition. In exile here on earth the Gnostic rebels against human limitations and the illusory constructs of the demiurge. His loyalty is to the ‘world’ beyond this world. He looks to the lost Golden Age and his task is to bring on its return. By actively embracing this mission, faithfully participating in this Great Battle, the Gnostic strives for total liberation. The American visionary novelist Philip K. Dick writes: What a tragic world this is. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don’t know it, they think they are free because they never have been free, and do not understand what it means. This is a prison and few men have guessed. But I know, he said to himself. Because that is why I am here. To burn the walls, to tear down the metal gates, to break each chain.2 Unfortunately, in the hapless struggle to subjugate his material environment, man fell victim to an even more insidious bondage. The tyranny of law and social controls advanced in the name of the jealous god. Later the Church and then the State replaced god. Names may change but the authority figure remains the same. Jealous God, Jehovah, Church, State, Money Power, Capitalism, these are just some of demiurgic CONTROL’s multiple forms. All sworn enemies of the Gnostic liberator. Centuries before Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, the Gnostic teacher Carpocrates (78-138) coined the proto-communist dictum: “Property is theft”. He established his Gnostic community on the communalist principles of Pythagoras and Plato. They held all things in common, rightly believing concepts of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’, of ‘subject’ and ‘object’, were introduced by law in order to convert to private property what naturally belonged to all. Laws prevent people from sharing the fruits of the earth and from enjoying freedom. No doubt, they would have agreed with Marx’s observation that capitalism “reduced the family relationship…to a purely money relationship.” Exclusive marriage along with private property were contrary to human freedom and a communal society of Justice and Truth. Marx’s co-worker Frederick Engels, like Carpocrates’ own disciples, opposed the institution of marriage on principle. Carpocrates had a son,
Epiphanes, a handsome, learned and eloquent youth who wrote a public treatise, On
Justice. On his death at age seventeen a temple was consecrated to him. And everything that exists, everything that lives, is subject to this law of justice and equality. Nourishment was provided for all living beings without singling out or favouring one species. The same is true of procreation. There is no written law concerning it, for such a law would inevitably be false. The animals procreate, couple and beget according to the laws of community which were inculcated into them by justice. The Father of All gave us eyes to see with, and his only law is that of justice, without distinction between male and female, man and woman, reasoning and unreasoning creature. As for the laws of this world, it is they and they alone which have taught us to act against the law. The prophet said: ‘I had not known sin, but by the law,’ and how are we to interpret his meaning, if it be not that the words ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ have entered into this world through the laws, and that this made an end to all community? Nevertheless, that which God created, he created for all to hold in common possession: vines, grains and all the fruits of the earth. Has the vine ever been seen to chase away a thief, or a thievish passeriform? But when man forgot that community means equality, and deformed it by his laws, on that day, the thief was born. The Gnostic disciples of Carpocrates and Epiphanes saw the world as the work of inferior energies, archons or angels (agents of CONTROL) who distorted the original plan of the True God entirely to the Adversary’s advantage. The laws of this world, issued in the name of a jealous god who punishes and rewards, were not part of the divine order and must be overthrown. The Gnostic revolts against the world of CONTROL, along with the enslaving tools of CONTROL regardless of their sanctimonious label: marriage, family, Church, the bourgeois State, the open society… “A total refusal accompanied by sovereign contempt,” is how one modern writer put it. Living in the land of the enemy, in the final age of darkness and conflict, the Gnostic is a consummate revolutionary, a skilled practitioner of the ‘metaphysical left’. The goal of a communal society, one of sharing and justice, emerged long before Marx and Lenin. The ideological positions of both Marx and Lenin may be said to be narrow developments of the original ‘Gnostic communism’ stripped of its spiritual, ‘utopian’ and transcendent elements. By denouncing all spiritual currents as oppressive religious superstitions, Marxism-Leninism dismissed an essential transcendent component capable of giving a superior meaning to existence. The writer Kenneth Rexroth reminds us: Prior to 1918 the word “communism” did not mean Left Social Democracy of the sort represented by the Russian Bolsheviks, a radical, revolutionary form of State socialism. Quite the contrary, it was used of those who wished in one way or another to abolish the State, who believed that socialism was not a matter of seizing power, but of doing away with power and returning society to an organic community of non-coercive human relations. They believed that this was what society was naturally, and that the State was only a morbid growth on the normal body of oeconomia, the housekeeping of the human family, grouped in voluntary association. Even the word “socialism” itself was originally applied to the free communist communities which were so common in America in the nineteenth century.3 Human beings are trapped by words. ‘Communism’ and ‘socialism’ are two words so abused and discredited they have lost their essential meaning in the minds of most people. With the Soviet Union’s collapse and the worldwide demise of socialist and communist political organisations, these terms have fallen into disrepute. Like the words ‘Christian’, ‘god’, ‘Jesus Christ’, ‘Church’, they can mean everything and nothing. As ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ die out, modern day Gnostics should appropriate them and reinvigorate them with their original meaning. Gnostic communism: the creed of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, of the League of the Elect, of the Cathars, Bogomils, Essenes, and the Nazarene revolutionary Jesus the Christ! The political and economic labels of ‘right’ and ‘left’ have also lost their meaning in the last days of the 20th century. There was a time in France when the Jacobin revolutionaries (opponents of the regime) sat on the left of the National Assembly, while the conservatives (supporters of the regime) sat on the right. Thus, the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ entered political discourse by way of the French revolution. If ‘left’ means revolution and total opposition to the status quo, then Gnostics are the ultimate ‘leftwingers’. The only authentic international Left! According to the Vedic tradition of India there is both the “left hand path” and the “right hand path” through which man can escape the bonds of nature. The Italian metaphysician Julius Evola says of the two Tantric paths, that of the ‘right’ and that of the ‘left’ hand: In the former [the right hand path], the adept always experiences “someone above him,” even at the highest level of realization. In the latter [the left hand path], “he becomes the ultimate Sovereign” (cakravartin = world ruler). This means that the duality between the integrated person and the dimension of transcendence, or between the human and God, has been overcome.4 During the final period of the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age in which we are now living, the left hand path is the most efficacious way of liberation. An ancient Tantric text states: “Shiva, the Terrible God, teaches in the doctrine of the left hand that man’s spiritual progress is only possible with the aid of the very things that are the cause of his downfall.” Correspondingly, Gnosticism in the modern age, is a left hand path. Like the Tantric left hand path, the Gnostic tradition demands a certain ‘homeopathic asceticism’. This means we arrive at the heart, or essence, of things by seizing their constituent contradictions. Through the union of apparent opposites we discover the truth. It also can be described by the statement: “let us stoke up the forbidden fires in order to burn them out and reduce them to ashes.” The Gnostic does not escape from life or suppress the physical body, for he understands that only by engaging and triumphing over life can liberation be achieved. He seeks to experience the body in order to master and defeat it. He engages the world so as to change it. He uncovers nature and transmutes it, so he can escape its bonds. This very struggle is part of the way to freedom from all conditioning. Gnosis really cannot be taught, since it cannot be explained by mere words, only intuitively perceived. The noble truths of the Gnostic tradition are presented in a rich variety of metaphors and allegories drawn from the language of the world’s great religions. Venerable arcane myths and legends often serve to convey a timeless reality. Even the words and images of secular literature, political debate and science fiction can be used to illustrate the Gnostic Call. However, all words are only poor symbols, time-bound, limited and insufficient. Understanding rests with the reader, the Gnostic seeker. The Arabian Gnostic teacher Monoimus wrote, “Take yourself as the starting point in every search for the divine principle. Discover what abides within you and you will find all things.” Words can become part of demiurgic trap that ‘binds’ us to illusion and produces drunkenness, dullness of sense. Gnostics look through the whole fraud of the world. Dr. Elaine Pagels, a modern scholar of Gnosticism, explains: The Valentinian Gnostics [disciples of the 2nd century Gnostic master Valentinus], like others, pointed out that most Jews and Christians think of God the creator in certain ways. They think of God as creator, father, judge, lord. They had these pictures in their minds of Him. They expressed a lot of interest in the way we use words to talk about reality. And that when we use words — I’m thinking of the Gospel of Philip — that says that when we use the word ‘God’ or ‘resurrection’ or ‘Jesus’ or whatever, we’re not talking about the realities that those words express, but we’re talking about our mental image of whatever those realities conjure up. And I think that is an effort to remind us that all of language is a purely symbolic system, especially religious language, and that it only comes to life when there’s some kind of inner experience that transforms us from which our language emerges. And they also wanted to point out that the story of creation as they saw it was not to be taken literally. That they believed that all things had come from a divine source that was much deeper and stranger than the picture of the creator as the book of Genesis portrays him.5 The rationalism and materialism that took over Western thought in the last three hundred years was just a predictable reaction to centuries of dogmatic, legalistic Christianity. The superstitious bondage of medieval Roman Catholicism gave birth to a dry, fundamentalist Protestantism. Then ignorant evangelicalism and greedy puritanism produced nineteenth century rationalism. The country was subjected to the rule of the bourgeoisie city. The Gnostic tradition stands outside this process. When Roman Christianity triumphed over the ancient pagan religions, the Gnostics condemned the false Church. Ours is the only authentic alternative. The real opposition to the imposter cult that usurped the name of Jesus, the Gnostic Revealer. Unlike the capitalist New Age phenomena of the 1980s and 90s, we totally reject selfish individualism and ego obsession. Gnosticism is the Primordial Tradition, the ancient occult knowledge preserved by initiates in both the East and the West. Gnostic movements or schools are communal, drawing from the original communist vision of the lost Golden Age found in the writings of such revolutionary thinkers as Pythagoras and Plato. Every man and woman who hears the Gnostic Call must unite with their brethren in a new community that has its roots in a superior world. We must work together to carry the Torch of Gnosis in a dark age of despair. We must become Gnostic revolutionaries, the vanguard of the New Beginning. By carrying out our mission we free ourselves from the traps of mundane existence and achieve the ultimate victory. FOOTNOTES 1. Mikhail
Bakunin, Reaction in Germany Reproduced From Life Science Fellowship Internationl
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