Gnosis … is a mutual knowing, and simultaneous being known, of and by God.

[Guest guest]

" Man is a trap … and goodness avails him nothing in the new

dispensation. There is nobody now to care one way or the other. Good

and evil, pessimism and optimism—are a question of blood group, not

angelic disposition. Whoever it was that used to heed us and care for

us, who had concern for our fate and the world's, has been replaced

by another who glories in our servitude to matter, and to the basest

part of our own natures. "

 

Lawrence Durell, Monsieur, or The Prince of Darkness

 

" The dominant element in Western religious traditions—particularly in

Europe and the Middle East, less so in America—tends to be

institutional, historic, and dogmatic in its orientations. This is

true for normative Judaism, for Islam in its Sunni and Shi'ite

branch, and for Christianity, whether Roman Catholic, Eastern

Orthodox, or mainline Protestant. In all of these, God essentially is

regarded as external to the self. There are mystics and spiritual

visionaries within these traditions who have been able to reconcile

themselves with institutional authority, but there always has been an

alternative convention, the way of Gnosis, and acquaintance with, or

knowledge of, the God within, that has been condemned as heretical by

the institutional faiths. In one form or another, Gnosis has

maintained itself for at least two millennia of what we have learned

to call the Common Era, shared first by the Jews and Christians, and

then by the |Muslims also…

 

Gnosis depends upon distinguishing the psyche, or soul, from the deep

self, which pragmatically means any strengthening of the psyche

depends upon acquaintance with the original self, already one with

God. Originality is as much the mark of historical Gnosticism as it

is of canonical Western literature, that Lewis simultaneously

deprecates both the self and originality confirms the Gnostic

negative analysis of those who assert that they live by faith rather

than by knowledge. Christian " faith " is pistis, a believing that

something was, is, and will be so. Judaic " faith " is emunah, a

trusting in the Covenant. Islam means " submission " to the will of

Allah, as expressed through the messenger Muhammad, " the seal of the

prophets. " But Gnosis is not believing that, a trusting in, or a

submission. Rather, it is a mutual knowing, and simultaneous being

known, of and by God.

 

I cannot pretend that this is a simple process; it is far more

elitist that C. S. Lewis's " mere Christianity, " and I suspect that

this elitism is why Gnosticism always has been defeated by orthodox

Christian faith, in history. But I am writing spiritual

autobiography, and not Gnostic theology, and so I return to personal

history to explain how I understand Gnosis and Gnosticism. You don't

have to be Jewish to be oppressed by the enormity of the German

slaughter of European Jewry, but if you have lost your four

grandparents and most of your uncles, aunts, and cousins in the

Holocaust, then you will be a touch more sensitive to the normative

Judaic, Christian, and Muslim teachings that God is both all-powerful

and benign. That gives one a God who tolerated the Holocaust, and

such a God is simply intolerable, since he must be either crazy or

irresponsible if his benign omnipotence was compatible with the death

camps. A cosmos this obscene, a nature that contains schizophrenia,

is acceptable to the monotheistic orthodox as part of " the mystery of

faith. " Historical Gnosticism, so far as I can surmise, was invented

by the Jews of the first century of the Common Era as a protest

against just such a mystery of faith which, as Emily Dickinson

wrote, " bleats to understand. " Yet " Gnosticism " is an ambiguous term;

even " the Gnostic religion, " Hans Jonas's suggestion, creates

difficulties, as he acknowledged. There were, so far as we can

ascertain, few, perhaps no Gnostic churches or temples in the ancient

world. And yet Gnosticism was more than a tendency, more even than a

party or a movement: I think it is best to call it a spirituality,

one that was and is a deliberate, strong revision of Judaism and

Christianity, and of Islam later. There is a quality of

unprecedentedness about Gnosticism, an atmosphere of originality that

disconcerts the orthodox of any faith. Creativity and imagination,

irrelevant and even dangerous to dogmatic religion, are essential to

Gnosticism. When I encounter this quality, I recognize it instantly,

and an answering, cognitive music responds in me. "

 

Harold Bloom, Omens of the Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams,

and Resurrection, pages 1-24

Paperback: 255 pages

Publisher: Riverhead Books (October 1, 1997)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1573226297

ISBN-13: 978-1573226295

 

 

 

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

 

Angels, prophetic dreams, and resurrection -- as we approach the

millennium, American culture is increasingly fascinated with what

many consider to be " new age " phenomena. Yet our current millennial

preoccupations are derived from the ancient Hebraic, Christian, and

Sufi traditions; they are neither ephemeral nor trivial. They have

inspired and captivated the greatest of Western thinkers, from

antiquity to Milton, Blake and Shakespeare.

 

What are the angels? And where does our notion of them originate?

What role have dreams played in the history of human consciousness?

What is the link between angels, prophetic dreams, and near-death

experiences? How are these phenomena relevant to us today, as we

approach the 21st century?

 

In this commanding and impassioned inquiry, Harold Bloom draws on a

life-long study of religion and, in particular, of Gnosticism, the

knowledge that God is not an external force but resides within each

one of us. Through the ancient literature of Jewish Kabbalah,

Christian Gnosticism, and Muslim Shi`ite Sufism, he reveals to us the

angels not as the kitschy cherubs we know today, but as magnificent,

terrifying, sublime beings who have always played a central role in

Western culture. He allows us to feel their splendor, and to

experience the powerful role that dreams and near-death experiences

have held throughout the centuries. And in the dazzling final

chapter, he delivers a Gnostic sermon in which he urges us toward

transcendence.

 

In Omens of Millennium, Harold Bloom has written a book whose triumph

is not only its synthesis of centuries of religious thought, but its

deep spirituality, through which we come to know - and to mourn - a

religious experience no longer available to us. A brilliant and

provocative book, sure to engender as much discussion as his books

The Western Canon and The Book of J. --This text refers to an out of

print or unavailable edition of this title.

 

From Publishers Weekly

 

A fascination with near-death experiences, alien abductions, angels

and prophetic dreams has reached a " particular intensity " in the U.S.

as the millennium approaches. Or so says Bloom (The Western Canon) in

this dazzling, maverick study in literature and comparative religion.

Pausing often to unpack his own religious convictions, which are

rooted in Gnosticism, a mystical belief system whose elusive history

he traces to early Christianity, Kabbalistic Judaism and Islamic

Sufism, Bloom contends that such " omens of the Millennium " are in

fact debased forms of Gnosticism. Gnosis, he writes, is a spiritual

orientation at odds with orthodox religion. It eschews faith in an

outward God for knowledge of the divinity of the deepest self and

retells the story of creation as a fall away from a Godhead and a

Fullness that, Bloom says, is more humane than the God of

institutional religion. Contrasting the " inspired vacuity " of New Age

writers like Arianna Huffington and Raymond A. Moody to authentic

Gnostic authors (who, according to Bloom, include ancient sages like

Valentinus, medieval Kabbalists like Isaac Luria and more modern

writers like Blake, Emerson and Shakespeare), Bloom explores how

images of angels, prophecies and resurrection have always mirrored

anxieties about the end of time, and how these images have been

domesticated by popular culture. Bloom frequently injects himself

into his study, discussing with rueful irony his own experiments with

the outer limits of consciousness, including his own " near-death

experience " (in a hospital while convalescing from a bleeding ulcer).

The final chapter is a Gnostic sermon on self-transcendence. This

book's brevity and eccentricities (Huffington and Moody are easy

targets who don't exemplify the range and complexity of New Age

thought) diminish its force as polemic. As a critical performance,

however, it's a tour de force, highlighting a secret history of

mystical thought whose visionaries and poets call out to each other

over the centuries.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Omens-Millennium-Gnosis-Angels-Resurrection/dp/1573226297