Why are so many movies going Gnostic? |315|

first off I gotta ask if you listened to the interview or just read excerpts because if you listen to the full interview you'll find that I not only like Brad, and generally respect what he's bringing forward, but also think he's got some really important insights... like with reincarnation... where he says (paraphrasing) "whether you believe in it or not, well here you are, in your reincarnation."

at the same time I'm dumbfounded that he doesn't know about reincarnation research... I expressed that.

I do get your point (if this was your point) re how the show was presented on the website. it comes off as a more opposition than the interview.

That was my point. It's not that important, but I think you are wrong labelling Brad as someone with the atheist view on the world.

As the side note, Snowpiercer reminds me of the novel by a Russian author Victor Pelevin, The Yellow Arrow. It has been translated into English and highly recommend it. I also suspect that the authors of the Snowpiercer borrowed some ideas from that novel.
 
Speaking of movies to this topic, has anyone seen a movie titled "The Nines"

Watch it in English and learn a little Spanish at the same time:


It's a good film, I think, but is it gnostic? Maybe there are elements that could be interpreted as gnostic--like the protagonist being a demiurge, about his creation being an illusion, that kind of thing. But it's interesting that in the end when he exits his creation, he apparently leaves his characters some independent existence.

It might not be consciously gnostic: just be a concatenation of sci-fi ideas with a little cod spirituality. Reminds me a bit of eXistenZ starring Jude Law:

 
That was my point. It's not that important, but I think you are wrong labelling Brad as someone with the atheist view on the world.
ok, and I don't think this is a major point of disagreement between us, and I do get what you're saying -- I definately don't think Brad is an atheist. at the same time, he mixes some of his ideas with this new atheism nonsense. I was trying to push him on some of this. for example, he writes:

I tend to agree with most of the things atheists say. I think evolution is real. I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t believe in Noah’s Ark or Krishna’s love-making prowess. I don’t think Buddha could fly and make fire come out of his head. I don’t think Jesus rose from the dead – though I do believe he existed. I think religious fanaticism based on the belief in a superhero God is a dangerous thing, a kind of pervasive social disease that should be eradicated for the good of everyone.

But I have been and remain deeply disappointed in most of the output of the neo-atheist movement. I bought Dawkins’ book The God Delusion thinking that it might be an interesting critique of the more sophisticated view of God. Since he was a scientist, I thought perhaps Dawkins would talk about how our delusions about God developed over time and what sort of function they may have provided early in human evolution. Instead, it was a long rant against a version of God that was so easy to demolish I don’t know why he needed so many pages to do it.

so, while I get what he's saying and generally agree with what he's saying, I totally disagree with his opening line; in fact, I tend to disagree with most things atheists say because I've learned that they usually come from a crippled materialist worldview. similarly, I generally disagree with most of this things fundamentalist Christian say because I've learned that they usually come from a fear-based, simplistic rules-based worldview. not always, but usually.

I guess that's why I jumped on the reincarnation research thing so hard... I think it reveals this divide between Brad and I.
 
Watch it in English and learn a little Spanish at the same time:

It's a good film, I think, but is it gnostic? Maybe there are elements that could be interpreted as gnostic--like the protagonist being a demiurge, about his creation being an illusion, that kind of thing. But it's interesting that in the end when he exits his creation, he apparently leaves his characters some independent existence.

It might not be consciously gnostic: just be a concatenation of sci-fi ideas with a little cod spirituality. Reminds me a bit of eXistenZ starring Jude Law

The folks here use a lot of university words that I always have to look up, lol. (repeatedly I might add because most times the explanations of the words themselves are as arcane as the words they are meant to explain, hehe)

Philosophy text has always stymied me big time. Much much worse than even EULA's, lol. When I looked up gnostic, 'the nines' seemed like a perfect example to my brain. :)

Funny too, I just listened to a radio program that had this guy being interviewed using gnosticism in the biblical sense as a sort of we are all the gods of our own creation sort of thing. <shrug>
Don't ask me, I'm just along for the ride. :D
 
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The folks here use a lot of university words that I always have to look up, lol.
Don't ask me, I'm just along for the ride. :D

A sure sign they don't know what the heck they are talking about.

Truths are always simple.

Now they have discovered a new word ,& are on some mad rollercoaster .
All aboard..
 
A sure sign they don't know what the heck they are talking about.

Truths are always simple.

Now they have discovered a new word ,& are on some mad rollercoaster .
All aboard..

What are these simple truths?
 
What are these simple truths?

They are what the individual has already acquired through their own spiritual unfoldment.
On the higher plane of knowing we accumulated truths. What is knowing : 'an inner certitude that no words can express' as someone once nicely put it.
However on the plane of conscious intellect, as we daily are, we express those truth's in all manners , sometimes wrongly.
 

Profound and animated explanation of 'The Matrix' from a Gnostic perspective. Gnosticism and Cinema: The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded - Dr. Stephan Hoeller.

* “Gnosis” (true insight), the doctrinal side of it, isn't the mad utterance of the conventional preachers and priests or the new agers and conspiracy sales men, but it is pure rationality due to the fact that it explains the first cause of existence, our (current) predicament, and fighting against essential prevalent ignorance. Also, it strengthens the mind to be self-sufficient (detachment morality).
 
* “Gnosis” (true insight), the doctrinal side of it, isn't the mad utterance of the conventional preachers and priests or the new agers and conspiracy sales men, but it is pure rationality due to the fact that it explains the first cause of existence, our (current) predicament, and fighting against essential prevalent ignorance. Also, it strengthens the mind to be self-sufficient (detachment morality)

Now you've got me very curious as to the gnostic explanation for first cause of existence..... in plain english btw. :)

while we're at it, what the heck is 'detachment morality'?
 
Essay on Gnosticism and the X-men

Kind of shows how the whole detachment/rejection of this world and lead one to weird sociopath state. Reminds of how we supposedly have all these mystics through the ages yet during their lifetimes it's questionable how much they did to alleviate the evils of the ancient world?

Why a dash of skepticism is useful when it comes to the idea of rejecting this world. OTOH, one can also see this as the problem with the materialist conception of transcending our innate biology via technology. So on that side a warning against transhumanism and faith that Science == Progress.

It is Gnosticism's conception of the self that is most interesting and radical: Gnosticism makes a distinction between the soul (in Greek the psyche) and the spirit (the pneuma). The psyche is primarily what we traditionally associate with the mental self, most exhaustively treated by Freud in his psychoanalysis: appetites and passions certainly, but also our love and our tastes, and much - perhaps all - of our personality. Emerson, an implicit Gnostic, referred to this as the "adhesive self."[4] Christianity, implicitly or explicitly, conceives of the body as a prison for the soul; Gnosticism conceives of BOTH the body and the soul (again, the personality, appetites and desires) as a prison for the spirit, the Gnostic spark, the part of God. (Freud's "bodily ego" admits the connection of body and psyche, though not as a prison for something else).

Emerson's Gnosticism is evident in his remarks about his son. He laments that grief (which occurs at the level of the psyche) cannot get him closer to "real nature"; for a Gnostic everything but the pneuma is unreal, including to a large extent other people. Bloom associates the spark with Genius;[5] it is probably best to think of it as the self that is beyond all categories, catalogues of traits, and definitions. Because Saint Paul defeated the Gnostics in the battle to control the destiny of the church (in much the same way Plato defeated the Sophists in the battle to control the destiny of philosophy), contemporary culture has nothing like this distinction, which is why it is so anti-intuitive. The imagination of the traditional Christian, for example, conceives of an ascent to heaven that would transport the individual to a blissfully happy place; we still recognize personalities, however happy, in Dante. Gnosticism, by contrast, speaks of the afterlife as the re-integration of the Gnostic spark with the divine, shedding the shell of both the body and the psyche. It is difficult to picture what would be left.

The Matrix
, Gnostic in its cosmology, could have been Gnostic in its "psychology" as well: Morpheus may have gotten Neo out of the illusory prison the Machines built to trap us, but can he get him out of the love he has for Trinity? A fully Gnostic director could conceive of his love for her as occurring on the level of the psyche, as another trap created by the Archons to keep him from waking up to realize his own power, his Gnostic spark.[6] These examples show that recognizing such a distinction has radical consequences, particularly when we use it to question existing conceptions of the Post-Human.
 
To what extent are the shards of gnostic symbolism and mythology that Miguel claims are in these movies simply projections of his own imagination?
Personal interpretational overlays...
He says during the discussion that he was recently explaining the gnostic symbolism in a certain movie to a christian, who replied that he had seen the movie as filled with Christian symbolism
 
Gnostics are the universal rebels.
Their myths express a recoil from and rejection of life on Earth.
They regard human incarnation as unjust bondage and imprisonment; and life in the physical universe as contemptible.

I can empathise with their point of view, but I cannot sympathise with it.

I empathise because I know the immense suffering and injustice of the human world.
I cannot sympathise because I know the vast majority of human suffering is entirely human caused.

In my world view human bondage and suffering in this world are predominantly caused by human ignorance and evil.
Half the planet lives on a few dollars a day; while 65 super rich individuals possess the same amount of wealth as that poorer half of the population.

And people still ignorantly cling to the absurd myths of the unregulated free market pursuit of private profit as being the best distributor of resources!

There is absolutely no rational or moral reason for most human suffering in this world.
There are only irrational and immoral reasons.

The enemy of humanity is not any demiurge; it is human ignorance and evil.

For instance the nemesis in the Snowpiercer movie is a human being – an oligarch; not a god
The loco-slavery system they live in is a human construction
And the world they are in is a human destroyed world; destroyed by the free market pursuit of private profit

(Our real world is currently free marketeering its way towards a biospheric crisis which may destroy our civilisation)

The people in that bizarre fictional world (as in our real world) are each other's tormentors.

Gnosticism is also elitist. If you read up on it a bit you will come across many casual references to how certain souls or individuals are of some higher origin and nature that makes them inherently gnostic and superior to the rabble in the prison yard….or at the back of the train?

I'd agree that it's better to start with what we know and deal with that rather than assume a vast interdimensional conspiracy to explain the evils of the world.

I would note that Gnosticism has many strains, so it's not inherently elitist though I'd agree there is a fantasy maintained in it that people in the know can see the correct conspiracies the "sheeple" can't.

If you look at Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels you'll note that rather than a priesthood claiming to pass on the once-in-history revelations of Christ there's the idea that what's important is one's personal experience of Christ (or, arguably, Christ-consciousness).

Additionally in this thread I quoted Raj Sisodia who argues every aspect of creation can be saved, including the Archons.

Also religions that give everyone a choice to pick the "correct" faith seem to have helped perpetuated a great many horrors - slavery, Holocaust, 9/11, Boko Haram...Not sure the elitism of the Gnostics is worse than that?
 
I'd agree that it's better to start with what we know and deal with that rather than assume a vast interdimensional conspiracy to explain the evils of the world.

I would note that Gnosticism has many strains, so it's not inherently elitist though I'd agree there is a fantasy maintained in it that people in the know can see the correct conspiracies the "sheeple" can't.

If you look at Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels you'll note that rather than a priesthood claiming to pass on the once-in-history revelations of Christ there's the idea that what's important is one's personal experience of Christ (or, arguably, Christ-consciousness).

Additionally in this thread I quoted Raj Sisodia who argues every aspect of creation can be saved, including the Archons.

Also religions that give everyone a choice to pick the "correct" faith seem to have helped perpetuated a great many horrors - slavery, Holocaust, 9/11, Boko Haram...Not sure the elitism of the Gnostics is worse than that?


Not sure how I managed to post that comment on Gnosticism in the wrong forum ...Doh!

You are right about gnosticism having many strains
And all religions are elitist
You are right about that too

I have a worldview and spiritual philosophy which is life-positive and world-positive
while not being world-centred or materialist or anything like that
Life on Earth is part of a bigger cosmic picture
I dont think we are born to escape life or the world
 
Not sure how I managed to post that comment on Gnosticism in the wrong forum ...Doh!

You are right about gnosticism having many strains
And all religions are elitist
You are right about that too

I have a worldview and spiritual philosophy which is life-positive and world-positive
while not being world-centred or materialist or anything like that
Life on Earth is part of a bigger cosmic picture
I dont think we are born to escape life or the world

I think Gnosticism as a world view can be rather melodramatic and overly paranoid.

However as a hypothesis it does try to offer reasoned explanations for the odd nature of reality we find ourselves in if consciousness is immaterial, we have souls, and Psi is real.

Hermeticism, which accepts the state of things as a sort of mystical accident, might be a happy medium between Gnosticism's demonic gods and the more saccharine ideas of Love being the Answer?
 
Hermeticism, which accepts the state of things as a sort of mystical accident, might be a happy medium between Gnosticism's demonic gods and the more saccharine ideas of Love being the Answer?
Perhaps the saccharine view is in itself a misrepresentation. There are many meanings to the word "love" but I'm not sure we should choose from amongst them, the meaning may be something not understood.
 
I think Gnosticism as a world view can be rather melodramatic and overly paranoid.

However as a hypothesis it does try to offer reasoned explanations for the odd nature of reality we find ourselves in if consciousness is immaterial, we have souls, and Psi is real.

Hermeticism, which accepts the state of things as a sort of mystical accident, might be a happy medium between Gnosticism's demonic gods and the more saccharine ideas of Love being the Answer?

I dont think human life or the living Earth are accidental - not at all
...even if there is much in life that appears to be accidental

Nor do I think life is pre-ordained or fated
There are strong currents and probabilities - even many inevitabilities; but we have a capacity for free will

I dislike the escapism and contempt for creation and life as a human being in gnosticism
because I think life and the Earth and humanity are of Cosmic significance
...as well as personal significance

For me this is an intuition
it's not an acquired belief from religion or philosophy
I cannot prove it by logic; nor can I provide scientific evidence

But the materialist who says the universe is meaningless cannot provide logic nor evidence either
 
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