Gnosis essentially is the act of distinguishing the psyche, or soul, from the deepest self

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" The experience of Gnosis is a varied phenomenon: your knowing may be

prompted by a moment of utter solitude, or by the presence of another

person. You may be reading or writing, watching an image or a tree,

or gazing only inward. Gnosis, though related both to mysticism and

to wisdom, is quite distinct from either. Mysticism, though it comes

in many kinds, by no means opposes itself to faith; perhaps indeed it

is the most intense form of faith. Wisdom, in the biblical sense, is

allied with the prophetic reception of a God who dominates our world,

which is seen having fallen away his original Creation. Gnosis grants

you acquaintance with a God unknown to, and remote from, this world,

a God in exile from a false creation that, in itself, constituted a

fall. You yourself, in knowing and being known by this alienated God,

come to see that originally your deepest self was no part of the

Creation-Fall, but goes back to an archaic time before time, when

that deepest self was part of a fullness that was God, a more human

God than any worshipped since.

 

I am very aware that my last sentence requires much unpacking, but it

was designed for that purpose, because Gnosis is entirely the

doctrine of the deep or deepest self. Gnosis essentially is the act

of distinguishing the psyche, or soul, from the deepest self, as an

act of distinction that is also a recognition. You cannot strengthen

your psyche without reacquainting yourself with your original self,

compared to which your psyche is only a remnant, a wounded survivor.

Peter Brown, in The Body and Society (1988), his study of " Men,

Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, " expresses this

succinctly, in an analysis of the Gnostic doctrine of Valentinus:

 

Even the soul, the psyche, the conscious self, had occurred as an

afterthought. It swathed the lucid spirit in a thick fog of doubt,

anxiety, and passion. The unredeemed lived as in a waking nightmare.

All human thought, even the most profound religious quest, was riven

with uncertainty and misplaced ambition. Only the spirit had a right

to exist. It stirred in the depths of the initiate with a blind,

insistent " ferment, " which betrayed its distant origin in the Place

of Fullness. This spirit, the pneuma, was the true person (p. 109).

 

The issue of all Gnosis (and of every Gnosticism) is indeed " the true

person. " We have an addiction, in the United States, that involves

the quest of an authentic self, in oneself and in the other person. "

 

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

and Resurrection, pages 183-4

Paperback: 255 pages

Publisher: Riverhead Books (October 1, 1997)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1573226297

ISBN-13: 978-1573226295