The Gnostic Teachings of Christ: Awakening to Direct Experience of God

But few of its adherents ever really get to walk the path of a true religion. They are treated to what religion inevitably becomes: dogma - loss of direct experience of God. There is no emphasis on direct experience of God, simply admission of one’s faith, both in God and in the institutions which tout His name and works.

Gnostic Christianity is a non-dogmatic sect which began in the early centuries after Christ’s death. Like most mystical sects, they were persecuted and labeled as heretics, their teachings pronounced demonic because they followed the Spirit, not the letter, of Christ. Their tradition would ultimately evolve into the arcane art of alchemy, which I have written on at considerable length (see my article and email series, Alchemizing the Future). 

They did not look upon Christ merely as savior, but exemplar, and that the work of Christ could only be completed within the context of every individual soul. This was equivalent to the alchemical objective - completing the work of the lapis philosophorum or philosopher's stone. Christ is the guide and exemplar to perfecting Christ in one’s own being with all of its difficulties, impurities, and peculiarities: that heart of infinite compassion which saturates every experience – of love or of hatred – with awareness. 

The idea strikes Christians even today as heretical. 

But as we will see, this is exactly what Christ was about. He did not want to continue suffering alone for all eternity while his so-called devotees are happy to keep him there, avoid taking up their own task. Rather, He invited others to awaken to the same reality He knew in Himself, and for which He was to become the cornerstone in Western civilization. In doing so they would consciously take up the path of suffering that we have relegated, imprisoned him, into. 

And if the world consciously suffers, it suffers far less than in unconsciousness. While unconsciousness brings Hell on Earth, as we are seeing the ramifications of: increasing surveillance, political and economic inefficacy, genocide, and so much more. 

Consciousness brings its opposite, namely Heaven on Earth. Thriving societies in which people of all kinds are integrated in their environment, like North America pre-colonization.

Dogma takes an esoteric teaching and robs it of its vitality. By trying to parrot out some idea you don't fully understand, you put yourself under the spell of something (which defies your understanding even more). Dogma transforms the direct experience of God into something to be avoided rather than strived after. 

And this way lies madness...

What does the truth of Gnostic Christianity have to offer our Western world which is, whether you agree or enjoy its tenets or not, a thoroughly Christian one? 

Read on.

Christ gave many wise teachings and spoke through His action more than His word. Among these is his guidance to feed the hungry, tend to the sick, clothe the needy. One must be wary of pharisees, and not just the historical ones, but the ones that walk among us today and have no real knowledge of God. To commit one’s life to the service and infinite love of the Father. 

These are all well and good, but they do even better when cast in the light of His most earnest and urgent teaching: 

Yes, He is capable of great works, but His will pale in comparison to what our hands will work once we have come, like Him, through the Father. That is – once we awaken to our inner reality and have a very personal relationship with God in a form that we cannot wholly expect or understand – then our works will be in league with the Christ. For nothing remains hidden to us, and we are no longer blindly groping about. We are no longer just pitiless humans in need of divine savior but are “…one with the Father,” are now prophets ourselves.

Because Christ’s message was the same of all true prophets in all times: until you look within you have no idea what is happening “out here.” The greatest intentions in the world might beset the world with horrors if the motivation is unknown. This is the process that ultimately produces relationship conflict and dissolution, as well as genocide and war. 

As above, so below. There is nowhere that God is not present. The places where you most deny Him is the place where He dwelleth the most. God is present in the trees, the animals, every corpuscle of every cell and every electron charge between every molecular bond. 

Who are you to deny Him in yourself? 

And in this way, by holding Christ as the frozen savior who forgives our sins no matter what because we “know not what [we] do,” we commit the unspeakable and unspoken hubris of denying the teaching of the prophet whom we supposedly worship - place God in our own mouths and puppet out what we would like Him to say. 

We have had our unconsciousness permitted and incentivized so that our Christ nature may be put into the service of nefarious works. I believe that we can all agree that this has not gotten us to the place where we want to be. 

I do not wish to single out Christians here. While they represent 69% of the American population, nearly 100% of us are responsible for the shifts in today, because the seeds of any true religion have been lost to us. All of us behave dogmatically, whether it is for science, religion, our livelihoods, or even for civil liberties. 

A true religion is one that helps prepare an individual to have an experience of Oneness, of God, as well as to integrate that experience back into the community. These direct experiences are what foster living prophetic traditions, and living prophetic traditions set excellent cornerstones for society. 

This is the wisdom of a living tradition, as being anti-dogmatic it is diametrically opposed to forcing beliefs on people, so it finds ways to keep them relevant. More on this in Pt. 2.

Without this kind of emphasis on both direct experience and communal integration, a living tradition calcifies into a dogma. The practices meant to take you to an experience of Oneness become the end in themselves, practical assurances that your soul would be saved. Nothing more to see here.

One need only think of the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where an exasperated Brian tells an adoring crowd, so eager for his teachings they’ve shown up at his home, to “Work it out for [themselves]” and that “[They] are all individuals,” to which they dutifully shout back: “Yes! We have to work it out for ourselves!” “Yes! We are all individuals!”

These are only clever delusions. You must still find out for yourself, and, if you are a Christian, your Savior commands it. 

When the people asked Jesus how many times they should pray, whether they should fast, what were the particular things they needed to “do” to be holy or get to Heaven, he said “Do not tell lies, and do not do things that you hate.” 

Which is to say, if you are going to fast, do it with love and reverence. If you are going to pray, do so with conviction. If you are going to make love, partake of consciousness altering substances, grow, make mistakes, die, rise again – you should do so with passion and full measure. Commit. For as Christ says in Revelation 3:16 - 

And while every human life is honored, every attempt valued, those with the most conviction are the ones that know themselves most intimately, have found the indwelling of God within their own hearts and are in union, “one with the Father.” 

I’ll explain this in more detail in Pt. 2, but Christ – both his gentle and loving aspect in the gospels and his stern, judgmental Revelations destroyer – are cornerstones of the Gnostic teachings. The Gnostics correctly intuited that, to most honor Christ, one must join Him in His crucifixion, descend down into Hell, have everything which is untrue, which is not God, burned away, then return to the world of mortals to perform miracles. While Christ’s sacrifice redeemed Humankind, our sacrifice redeems and renews Christ and participates in the preservation of the world.