I wanted to share some further thoughts on the Gnosticism discussion that have occurred to me over the past few days. They’ve largely been sparked by both the discussion on here, further thinking, and also exposure to a couple podcast episodes on The Higherside Chats and similar sources.
On Sunday morning, I had the impulse to take a look through my recently downloaded podcasts and see if there might be any topics that struck me as interesting. I noticed that THC had an episode regarding “pizzagate” which is something I really didn’t know anything about, though I had heard the phrase numerous times as related to “fake news.” As I have become deeply suspicious of the “fake news” meme, as well as the MSM, I decided I’d go ahead and delve in.
Well… I guess I came late to the party. After only a half hour or so of listening to the episode with David Seaman and a few quick glances on Google Images at the odd paintings hanging at a certain beltway restaurant—as well as in the personal possession of a notable staff person to a notable political candidate—I found myself besieged by the sort of paranoia Miguel discusses at the beginning of the Skeptiko episode with Alex. It was that spiritual blend of paranoia - the Philip K. Dick what-the-hell-is-really-going-on-here-and-what-kind-of-world-am-I-really-living-in-and-is-anything-I’ve-ever-assumed-to-be-true-really-true!? kind of paranoia. The kind that makes you feel that dreadful feeling that you might really be a very small worm on the end of a very, very big hook.
As I am becoming inclined to almost automatically engage in self inquiry every time I find my mind getting wrapped up in some emotional turbulence, I went back to engaging in the usual Vedanta-related mantras that I’ve picked up along the way over the past year, “I am whole, complete, ever present, never changing, always peaceful, non-dual awareness.”
While the jiva was there in the shower considering the possibility that he really was just a rat in a morally deprived, malevolent, inhuman cage, he considered again some earlier statements he made in this thread that the archons are really in us. Now, this could be taken in at least two ways. First, within consciousness itself lays Maya, in which unfolds the entire illusory world (In case you haven’t encountered Vedanta - according to Vedanta the world is illusory because it changes. Only the unchanging is real.) Part of this illusory world is the personality and within the personality lays various dispositions accorded it known as vasanas, which are forms of conditioning – particularly pleasure-attainment and pain-avoidance-related thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As we are inclined to think of this complex of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as a large part of “us” we end up bound in them, failing to recognize that, regardless of what is showing up on the theater screen of the mind, we are the light that flows through the projector and makes the movie visible. Nothing can touch us. We are “whole, complete, ever present, never changing, always peaceful, non-dual awareness.” Apart from this knowledge, we remain enthrall to the archons or the vansanas/samskaras or “the flesh”, etc., depending on your vocabulary.
The other way to take it, that occurs to me, is that in addition to the above (and much like it, but different) even should an “archon” in the form of an ancient Titan appear before the jiva it would still be appearing in us as awareness. As above, so below. To borrow a pithy statement from occultist Lon Milo DuQuette, “It's All in Your Head … You Just Have No Idea How Big Your Head Is.”
So, there I was, in the shower, contemplating this powerful paranoia welling up within me at the thought of malevolent agencies which, should the above be taken seriously, are in me. And the Pauline quotation that Miguel invoked at the beginning of the episode shot through my head, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Which led me to a consoling, more manageable take on the whole thing: Yes, if there is an elite cabal out there carrying out awful, despicable, morally depraved, malevolent actions the likes of one’s worst #pizzagate nightmares, that is a disheartening thing indeed. HOWEVER, those actors are still just flesh and blood. They’re not superhuman. They, too, will one day turn to dust. Riffing on old St. Paul, it’s the unseen agencies which have incarnated in them that are the issue.
To conclude, the idea I’m currently playing around with is that it is awareness which is the “high place” of St. Paul. The spiritual wickedness which goes on in the light of awareness is known to all of us. You might call it the seven deadly sins or Satan or the shadow, etc., but it is that inclination to avoid pain and attain pleasure taken to its darkest, most awful conclusions and the complete identification with the mind-intellect-ego that slaves away in service to those impulses. From a hidden seed comes an awful, hideous tree which bears poisonous fruit. Recognize that the vasanas occur in you but are not you. YOU know THEM, THEY do not know YOU. They should be serving YOU and not you serving THEM.
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
Or, as some sages are prone to saying, “Don’t get it twisted.”
Anyway, those were just some thoughts that came to me in the shower, after drinking coffee, and perhaps after a bloody mary ; )