{"quotes":[{"text":"Gnosticism is undeniably pre-Christian, with both Jewish and gentile roots. The wisdom of Solomon already contained Gnostic elements and prototypes for the Jesus of the Gospels...God stops being the Lord of righteous deed and becomes the Good One...A clear pre-Christian Gnosticism can be distilled from the epistles of Paul. Paul is recklessly misunderstood by those who try to read anything Historical Jesus-ish into it. The conversion of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles is a mere forgery from various Tanakh passages... [The epistles] are from Christian mystics of the middle of the second century. Paul is thus the strongest witness against the Historical Jesus hypothesis...John's Gnostic origin is more evident than that of the synoptics. Its acceptance proves that even the Church wasn't concerned with historical facts at all.","author":"Arthur Drews","tags":["christ-myth","christ-myth-theory","christian-gnosticism","christian-history","christian-mystics","church","conversion-of-paul","epistles","epistles-of-paul","facts","gentile","gnostic","gnostic-gospels","gnosticism","gospel-of-john","grosticicm","historical-facts","historicity-of-jesus","historicity-of-paul","jewish","mystics","paul","solomon","synoptic-gospels","tanakh","wisdom"],"id":7279,"author_id":"Arthur+Drews"},{"text":"The separation of the individual from a corporeal relationship with the Soul is mirrored in the separation of the individual from nature. This is perhaps one of the most important spiritual and psychological poisons of modernity: the alienation of the individual from the wilderness of nature. The modern obsession with progress and technology has worked to effectively separate man from the unpredictable and uncontrollable milieu of the wilderness and the concomitant alienation of the Soul from the flesh. The modern mind worships the Techno-God and uses many methods to enforce the separation of the flesh from the Soul. Reconnecting to nature requires only concentrated periods spent in a natural environment instead of living a life entirely immersed in artificial environments Efforts should be made to spend significant time in nature to allow the Sacramental Vision to thrive and organically develop. Without a constant connection to nature, the primordial voice of the Soul will eventually fade into silence. Nature must become a constant companion.","author":"Craig Williams","tags":["gnosticism","nature","occult","spirituality"],"id":15499,"author_id":"Craig+Williams"},{"text":"From this perspective, we were all divine Shakespeares, creating and playing the roles of muscled heroes and conniving villains, pious saints and debauched sinners, corrupt CEOs and disinterested temp workers.","author":"Jonathan Talat Phillips","tags":["activism","gnosticism","mysticism"],"id":54351,"author_id":"Jonathan+Talat+Phillips"},{"text":"Could it be that following our initiatory path and connecting with higher source wisdom might actually be one of our species’ best defense systems?","author":"Jonathan Talat Phillips","tags":["activism","energy-healing","gnosticism"],"id":99235,"author_id":"Jonathan+Talat+Phillips"},{"text":"Heresy would like to think of itself as 'invented Truth'. But of course, all Reason and Logic would agree that no man can ever create Truth; he can only discover it. If heresy were ever at all beneficial, God would use it really to bring one right back to Truth, as countless 'inventions' have brought men to discovery.","author":"Criss Jami","tags":["answers","apologetics","argumentation","beliefs","church","create","deceit","definition","discovery","doctrine","exploration","facts","false-prophets","falsehood","fundamental","gnosticism","god","heresy","honesty","hope","invent","lies","logic","mathematics","mystery","opinions","original","orthodoxy","philosophy","questions","reason","religion","science","theology","thinking","thought","truth","unoriginal"],"id":121702,"author_id":"Criss+Jami"},{"text":"If I had been born in the medieval times, my subjective union with God and the Universe would have evoked the rise of another Gnostic religion. But, by the grace of Mother Nature, I am born in an era of Science and Reasoning. Hence, I have dissected my own experience of Absolute Divinity as well as the experiences of all the religious giants in my works, in order to discover the physical truth underneath these apparently supernatural experiences.","author":"Abhijit Naskar","tags":["brainy","faith","gnosticism","inspirational","meditation","mindfulness","neurotheology","nonduality","philosophy","prophets","religion","religions","sage","scientists","thinker","transcendence","truth","words-of-wisdom"],"id":124932,"author_id":"Abhijit+Naskar"},{"text":"Why build entirely new systems for connecting to Christ consciousness when the institutions—whether Methodist, Lutheran, or Baptist—have already been created?","author":"Jonathan Talat Phillips","tags":["activism","gnosticism"],"id":196597,"author_id":"Jonathan+Talat+Phillips"},{"text":"However it—or the kind of extreme individualistic epistemology it embraces—can lead historians to an overly skeptical approach particularly to those sources that were intended to recount and inform events of the past, that is, testimony in this restricted sense. Particularly in Gospels scholarship there is an attitude abroad that approaches the sources with fundamental skepticism, rather than trust, and therefore requires that anything the sources claim be accepted only if historians can independently verify it…..","author":"Richard Bauckham","tags":["christ-myth","christ-myth-theory","christian-gnosticism","christian-history","christian-mystics","church","conversion-of-paul","epistles","epistles-of-paul","facts","gentile","gnostic","gnostic-gospels","gnosticism","gospel-of-john","grosticicm","historical-facts","historicity-of-jesus","historicity-of-paul","jewish","mystics","paul","solomon","synoptic-gospels","tanakh","wisdom"],"id":208357,"author_id":"Richard+Bauckham"},{"text":"Have you by any chance an edition of St. Ignatius's treatise against the Gnostics?' he asked in a low clear voice. The young assistant looked gravely back. 'Not for sale, I'm afraid,' he said. 'Nor, if it comes to that, the Gnostic treatises against St. Ignatius.' 'Quite,' Anthony answered.","author":"Charles Williams","tags":["books","christianity","fathers-of-the-church","gnosticism","theology"],"id":224626,"author_id":"Charles+Williams"},{"text":"And becoming aware of one's true inner nature, instinctive gut feelings, is not generally thought by those who experience it to be in conflict with the essence of one's spiritual knowledge, but more of a Gnostic direct experience of the Sacred experienced in the gut or all of nature that is greater than us and is connected to us through the gut instincts.","author":"Martha Char Love","tags":["gnosis","gnostic","gnosticism","gut-instincts","inner-nature","instinctive","sacred","spiritual-knowledge"],"id":227486,"author_id":"Martha+Char+Love"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":19,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}