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| Ourobouros: “Serpens qui caudam devorat” (serpent that eats its tail) represents many things, including totality, the cycle of life, and the “conjunctio oppositorum”- the union of opposites. In this seal, the motto “Cum patientia” (“with patience”) sums up the struggle between self-knowledge and self-deception. |
How do you know what is real? This question has been asked thousands of times before, and in many different situations. Here, we are asking the question to broaden and enrich the understanding of the transcendental experience known as gnosis; not only that of self-described Gnostics, but for the many peoples and traditions who share this unique type of insight.
As with all things mystical and transcendent, our experiences are difficult to quantify in ways that might make them more accessible to science. For the average person, it is very difficult to prove that we have subjective experiences that are shared by others, but which are nearly impossible to examine from an objective, scientific perspective. Maybe some of this problem is rooted in ourselves, our languages and cultures. Public discourse on ‘objectivity’, as just one example, is relatively new to our social and educational environments.
This is not a philosophical treatise on what is truly ‘real’, so please don’t be frightened. Unfortunately, long words are necessary evils in this particular fumble-through-the-darkness.
If there were simple Anglo-Saxon words for the concepts which we’re about to examine, I would have used them. But how would a 5th century northern Germanic tribesperson have described “objectivity?” They probably would have called it the “truth”, which at that time was written: tríewþ, which in turn comes from the very old proto-Germanic word trewwj, which meant “to have good faith.” But it also meant loyalty, honesty, and a general agreement between the thing that is being called “true” and fact, or reality. (2.)
The purpose of this exercise in early Germanic language is to show two things. First, how our cultural concepts of complex ideas such as “truth” or “objectivity” are products of a long series of linguistic and historical understandings held in common by one people in particular. Second, hopefully now you appreciate that it is actually easier sometimes to use the big, ugly, foreign-rooted words like “intersubjectivity”, than to beat our linguistic ancestors with proverbial dinner bones in an attempt to knock some nuance into their vocabulary.
It is precisely in this cultural and linguistic haze that our minds are constantly trying to translate our experiences into words, symbols, myths, and rituals; in a word, we try to express the inexpressible. Where reason leaves off, emotions and culture take over, and so this might lead us to recognize that our understanding and experience of certain mystical or transcendental feelings is often the result of many influences.
Some excellent theorists have adopted the argument that there is no need to prove or disprove of the existence of a spiritual realm because spiritual knowledge, insight, or gnosis itself needs no explanation for the individual to attain a greater awareness of him/herself and others. This experience has been described as being sort of like poetry – numinous, contradictory, mysterious, and so on.
I suppose that we could leave the question there, but that would be very boring. Many people have struggled with these questions for millennia, indeed science itself was born from the quest for knowledge of the metaphysical as well as the physical universe.
For science, it is not enough to rely on subjective experiences, and that is as it should be. No personal belief can be adequately examined using the hard and fast rules of the scientific method. But that doesn’t mean that there can never be a synthesis of science and spirituality at some level.
Recently St. Sarah's Parish discussion group was introduced to the research of Dr. Kenneth Ring, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Ring’s work was brought to our attention by St. Sarah's parishioner Dr. Peter Hagelstein, a cold fusion researcher and Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Ring’s research has focused for the past 30 years on near death experiences (NDEs), including hundreds of case studies of people who have clinically been dead and returned to normal physical health. The case studies reveal startlingly similar accounts of the patients’ experiences. Perhaps more shocking than the experiential similarities between NDE events, are the quantifiable changes in these people’s lives afterwards. No matter their religious or non-religious preferences and background, certain psychological, behavioral and even physical changes took place in the vast majority of the cases studied.
These were not simple ideas or religious platitudes, but actual shifts in the daily lives of NDE survivors. Among these were: an appreciation for life, self-acceptance, concern for others, reverence for life, anti-materialism, anti-competitiveness, spirituality, a quest for knowledge, sense of purpose, vanquishing the fear of death, belief in existence after death, and a varied sense and belief in the existence of some form of higher consciousness or divinity. Other changes included a shift in consciousness and paranormal functioning and altered physiology and neurology. (3.)
While these case studies do not answer all the questions about the value or existence of another reality beyond the physical life which we can measure, they certainly open a portal through which a better analysis of transcendent experiences can begin from a scientific perspective. Towards that goal it is probably a good idea to resist the temptation of getting embroiled in theology and philosophy, and focus on some fundamental analysis of mystical and other transcendent experiences and traditions over the long term of human history. But first, we need to agree on some healthy self-criticism. Our focus needs to shift from exclusively reading ancient texts and old, sagely aphorisms, which in turn give imperfect form to our internal experiences as individuals, and often cloud our approach to life. We no longer need to mythologize or create supernatural, anthropomorphic representations to explain complex ideas such as cosmology. Our situation is quite different from that of our ancestors. They, without the proper cultural, linguistic, and scientific tools, understandably had need of those structures. That does not mean that ancient ways and traditions are wrong, or that they should be ignored, but it does mean that we must confront and try to better comprehend our place within the universe on our own terms, and by using all of the tools at hand. That is why we have reason and accountability.
In light of our qualities of reason and accountability, there are at least three questions to be answered:
(1.) How do we know what you and others are experiencing is real and transcendent?
(2.) What happens in the world to show us that this transcendent experience is desirable?
(3.) Assuming the effects of these experiences are desirable, what do you propose to do with them, and why?
Within the next few paragraphs let us look at how both ritual and morality, which have historically followed mystical or transcendent experiences, evolve over time and under specific conditions, and how they are therefore not universal truths, but beneficial expressions of intersubjectivity. Another long, ugly and terribly wonky word, I know. Intersubjectivity simply means “a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced (subjectively) but by more than one subject.” (Wiki)
Just as C.G. Jung held that all humanity shares a common, archetypal “unconscious” unity, perhaps there are ways of approaching this shared notion of transcendent reality in ways that are suitable to our times. Furthermore, it is the point of a transcendental tradition to overcome the apparent contradictions between our sensual and rational lives without rejecting the validity of either one.
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| Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was a Swiss psycho-analyst and the founder of Analytical Psychology |
1. How do we know what you and others are experiencing is real and transcendent?
You know what you know, but that doesn’t mean that you can sell it to other people as the truth. Your experience, whether it is Gnostic, Jewish, atheist, Christian, Buddhist, neo-Pagan, or what have you, may be real or imagined, and the millions of elements that go into your experience of the world have everything to do with how you perceive and describe it.
The validity and soundness of individual revelation does not prepare or enable anyone to initiate others along a subjective path, nor does it provide us with a group of teachings etched in stone for all eternity. Just because one or a thousand people say that they have direct contact with the transcendent “truth” doesn’t and shouldn’t affect your opinion regarding its validity. Literature and scriptures should have even less bearing on your evaluation because they were written and edited by people who may have lived in entirely different circumstances, with different values, thought patterns, and lives. Everyone has an axe to grind, even me, the person who is writing to you to remind you that everyone has an axe to grind.
The answers to these questions are not universal or static; they follow the contours of our social, cultural, religious and economic environments, and they are also heavily influenced by human psychological traits that are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional products of natural, sexual selection.
Human evolution needs to be given more consideration within the context of these fundamental questions because we know that, contrary to many philosophical and theological arguments from the past, humans do, and have changed dramatically. In fact, human behavioral genotypes have not only changed more than 7 percent in the last 40,000 years, they have done so at an accelerated rate for the past 10,000 years. Our cultures, agriculture, economies and governments have bred a new kind of human behavior. (4.)
In a recent paper published in the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Peter Frost illustrates a convincing argument that the genome has undergone dramatic changes, and that those attributes which have been increasingly purged are those of wildness and aggression. The moral compass of the Roman state, for example, clearly pacified the population through selection. But of course Rome would eventually fall to the barbarian tribes which had not lost their taste for aggression.
All State societies are prone to collapse because their existence depends on the State’s ability to repress individual and communal violence. Such repression permits a higher level of economic output and ultimately a larger population. It also alters the mix of behavioral genotypes by selecting out aggressiveness and selecting in submissiveness. (5.)
This argument opens a fascinating field for speculation and research because the data reveal a real and constant change in human behavior. The selection and sexual success of people who were more peaceful, more docile and subservient to their masters and their culture, clearly procreated more than their counterparts under the influence of human policies. On the flip side, when natural selection meets the state’s monopoly on violence, in Rome it meant hunting ‘undesirables’ down, and from our own recent past it should remind us of 19th century experimentation in eugenics, and the 20th century Nazi horror, or the ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the former Yugoslavia.
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| The Roman state exterminated all opposition to its authority, creating a new kind of ancient person. |
2. What happens in the world to show us that this transcendent experience is desirable?
First, there is confusion between the validity of spiritual experiences and institutional and/or cultural prejudices. It is very difficult to describe and act on transcendental or mystical experiences when our language and upbringing is so incredibly skewed. Mainstream media and cultural influences would have us believe that if we have an intimate relation or experience with the divine, then we must also reject tolerance, alternative sexualities, science, reason, and nearly every other quality that underpins the development of both human and scientific advancement.
This means that today’s Gnostic or other transcendental practitioner must constantly differentiate between the religious bigotry and superstitious belief in the infallibility of scriptures (and/or institutions) on the one hand, and the inner validity of his or her own path on the other. There is a great need for esoteric Gnostics and other mystics to be mindful that the use of archaic terms, prayers, icons, and liturgical language must be tempered with equal amounts of reflection and outreach regarding our categorical, and indeed, fundamental refutation of the atonement theology that most often permeates those elements.
Our traditions are only as good as their efficacy in describing and stimulating action on core teachings, which in the case of Gnostics, is of course gnosis. For purposes of discussion and explanation, it may be necessary to rethink theistic terms and replace them with more closely identifiable words which describe the desired way of action, and not a supernatural construct or anthropomorphic ideal. John Shelby Spong has written extensively on this subject in his book A New Christianity for a New World : Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born.
For most contemporary Gnostics, gnosis, the sacraments, and the ecclesia are all defined by their quality of intersubjectivity in the phenomenological sense. From intersubjectivity, we hope that empathy and love will develop. Perhaps this activity is best described as an evolutionary account of morality, in which religion has played a key role as moral innovator. (6.) This evolution is not of course synchronized among the many individuals who make up the body, but it is an ongoing process within and among us. Or so we would like to believe. There may be other, more esoteric meanings to the word “church”, but I do not think that many would argue against the general idea of it being the medium and the means of connecting the ‘gathering’, the very word that it signifies in Greek.
Mysticism is an attitude toward life, and decidedly not a creed about the world. Maybe that understanding is not shared universally, but it is broadly applicable to many spiritual traditions and ways of thinking. To some people, that tension might seem to be contradictory, but the two roles are clearly different. Our short experiences of transcendental knowledge or insight, if we have them, while being subjectively very important, are always untested and unsupported, and should therefore only be shared with others as a subjective experience and not a tool of coercion or influence. And yet the entire body of writings (Gnostic, Christian and Hermetic texts, ancient and modern), drives to do the very thing that it should not under the contradictory conditions which we face.
To reiterate, the core teachings of both esoteric and exoteric doctrines are reflections of a way of life, an approach to the cosmos, and not a code of belief.
This problem is represented in the comparison between reason and intuition. One person’s insight does not the truth make. Obviously in history there were people or groups which considered themselves important enough to impose their attitude about life as a creed about the world. But the alternative to creeds and “official teachings” (Magisterium) in a word, is mystagogy, the foundation of the initiatory traditions which inform many seekers today. For the Johannite Church, this tradition of mystagogy is what puts the “esoteric” in our common self-identification as an esoteric, Gnostic Christian communion. There is a big difference between mystagogy and the kind of “my way or the highway” catechesis which emerged in the Roman Catholic tradition, but also in later Protestant denominations.
The creedal approach to spirituality is likely one of the many reasons why the Gnostics never agreed to adhere to the Nicene Creed (325 AD), nor its subsequent revision at the Council of Constantinople in 381, nor the so-called Apostles’ Creed which dates to 710 – 714, which was more than 600 years after the death of the last Apostle - by tradition, St. John. Although the Johannite Church has employed various statements of principle and general beliefs since the early 1800s, they are not meant to refute the validity of other paths, but to affirm one tradition and frame of spiritual reference as our own.
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| Hermes Trismegistus, from whom Hermeticism derives its name, is perhaps the classic example of both a mystagogue and an open tradition that focuses on inner spiritual work |
Finally, we may not have mystagogues like Hermes anymore, but what we see our teachers, sisters and brothers doing should be showing us that the transcendent experience is not only real, but desirable. This provision doesn’t require perfection, but a preponderance of intentions and actions. If that is not the case most of the time, then the teachings are probably no longer effective. This is why reformations happen.
Unfortunately, the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Europe created the conditions whereby the entire text of the Bible was transformed into a creed of sorts, whose many ‘interpreters’ have caused the rise of ever-more fundamentalist factions, each vying for the ‘truer truth.’ The result of this tendency to take the Bible literally, which in theological terms is called the doctrine or principle of Sola scriptura, has produced an even more calamitous culture of spirituality than the creeds of the early Catholic Church. This is not to say that the Reformation was entirely negative, but to point out the historical consequences of literalism.
3. Assuming the effects of these experiences are desirable, what do you propose to do with them, and why?
The first answer to this question is the constant struggle between the discovery of self-knowledge and self-deception. We need to beware that our insights, no matter how beautiful or tragic they might seem, are sometimes illusory. Look at the example of lovers. We cast our eye in a person’s direction, believing through insight that this person is x, y, and z. And yet we deceive ourselves all the time in relationships by projecting our needs and desires onto the other person. In the end, our insight proves to be at least partially illusory. If one believes in one’s insight as absolute truth, without regard for the insights of others, then it has become the very thing one sought to escape – deception and slavery!
This poses something of a circular problem. Perhaps that is why Hermeticism and Alchemy so easily assimilated the ancient gnostic symbol of Ouroboros.
Just as the dragon or the serpent eats its own tail, we are faced with a series of contradictions and cycles:
• Mystical theology is free and not only encourages but demands an appreciation of insight as the source of true knowledge and experience through the ages;
• Self-awareness through rational and ritual practices (study, sacraments, prayer, breathing, etc.) can be enhanced, and hopefully this will lead to an increase in the potential for more insight;
• More insight may or may not lead to actual changes in the psychology and actions of the individual, and therefore the surrounding community – the gathering of others: the “ecclesia of all humanity.”
But if the above is true, then isn’t our mysticism an attitude toward life and a creed about the world? Moreover, after thousands of years of mystical practice, don’t we have a body of creeds about the world based on experience?
Yes we do, these are recorded in scriptures, poetry, etc., but not as codified and complete schematics. If some of the esoteric principles of India made their way to Egypt and from Egypt to Palestine and from there to Rome and so forth, then we start to appreciate the evolutionary entirety of the tradition in question. It is a human body of knowledge that forms the left hand, the initiatory school of life. Ritual and learning are the ways that this body is extended through time. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this way of passing-down rituals and knowledge is that change itself is constant within us and over the long term of human physical and metaphysical development.
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In this depiction from the 12th century Hortus Deliciarium we can see in the center the queen of philosophy throning over the Greek philosophers Socrates and Plato, surrounded by the seven Liberal Arts. (Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectics, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astronomy.) The four scholars at the bottom, with black crows in their necks, are supposed to represent the "godless" arts of poetry and magic. (Hortis deliciarium, anonymous, created for the abbess Herrad of Landsberg). |
If Christianity gave us utopian ends (agape, pastor-flock relations, etc.) which have wandered their way through the Western mind into lots of totalitarian corners, I think that it can be equally said that the mystagogy of Hermeticism has given us the heritage of humanism. For all three schools: Gnostic, Christian and Hermetic, there might be general agreement today that a moral system is one in which the central value is the well-being of humans as the living vessels of the spirit. But this has not always been true, and in some corners it is still hotly debated. The “right hand” teachings of mainstream Christianity without the left hand are inadequate over the long term. Thus, the esoteric Gnostic Christian tradition contains an emphasis on both left and right.
For us, this combination necessarily means that a dialectical approach to transcendental practices requires us to endure a constant cycle of birth, death, and regeneration that corresponds exactly to the cycles of the seasons and our own lives. Birth, death, and resurrection, are not events to be celebrated as having taken place for one person, or even within our own lifetimes, they are constant reminders of our individual and common evolutionary paths.
Through this sometimes painful process, we learn how to negotiate a place for ourselves which must simultaneously be respectful and nurturing of our individual experiences and those of everyone else. If a historical evolution of the consciousness of humanity requires that we treat others with the same respect which our inherent dignity merits, then that inherent dignity must also compel us as individuals and as a society, to learn to distinguish within ourselves that which is deserving of our own respect. No one can do that work for us. Ω
Notes:
This paper was originally presented for discussion to the members of the Parish of St. Sarah-the-Egyptian of the Apostolic Johannite Church in Boston, June 2011.
(1.) In Gnostic theology, we use the word ‘transcendent’ a lot less than ‘immanent’ because our focus, unlike mainstream Christianity, is not on a divinity uniquely outside of us, but inside and all around us. Still, for the purposes of this discussion, ‘transcendent’ is meant to describe an understanding or communication in, with or from a state of being that surpasses physical existence.
(2.) Oxford English Dictionary on true has "Steadfast in adherence to a commander or friend, to a principle or cause, to one's promises, faith, etc.; firm in allegiance; faithful, loyal, constant, trusty; Honest, honourable, upright, virtuous, trustworthy; free from deceit, sincere, truthful " besides "Conformity with fact; agreement with reality; accuracy, correctness, verity; Consistent with fact; agreeing with the reality; representing the thing as it is; Real, genuine; rightly answering to the description; properly so called; not counterfeit, spurious, or imaginary."
(3.) Ring, Kenneth. Lessons from the Light, Moment Point Press,
(4.) Hawks, J., Wang, E.T., Cochran, G.M., Harpending, H.C., and Moyzis, R.K. (2007). Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 104, 20753-20758.
(5.) Frost, P. (2010) “The
(6.) Religion as Moral Innovation A review of John Teehan, In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence, Wiley-Blackwell:
