2 of 38 | The Gnostics Knowledge of Spiritual Mysteries

  

( Continued from Part 1 )...so is every one that is born of the Spirit.'  

If you tie yourself down to logic, you will not know the real

things, the 'Things that are,' by getting inside them.  Your knowledge

will be external, superficial.  Gnôsis, you may be surprised to learn,

is not just 'knowing,' it is light _and_ 'life,' living and being as

well.  This must not be taken as an attacking reason; if you join our

school you will have a stiff course of Plato.  You ought to know the

Things that are' from the ordinary point of view, from outside, before

you approach them with the idea of getting inside them, and so raising

them up within yourself as far-shining lives.  Afterwards you will

study in a new manner that will seem madness to the common-sensed; and

a Divine Madness indeed it is, for it will lead you to the secret of

the Cross."

Hence the disciple was confronted in due time with a document that

would not yield its secrets to dialectic, a kind of ritual in words

that initiated his intuition into self-knowledge.  Intense devotion was

needed, imagination, and will-power.  The Gnôsis came gradually,

perhaps after the manuscript had been laid aside; it was the effort

towards a sympathetic understanding that mattered, that was rewarded

with life and light from God.  The mere success of the logical mind in

unravelling a puzzle was as nothing, for the readings of these

monstrous, many-faceted stars of symbolism were infinite.  That the

intuition should enter into self awareness as into a sacred place of

the mysteries--that was a process of the Gnôsis.

Now this strange way of teaching, which was really a "Cloud of

Unknowing," was the real basis and point, as it were, of the

Alexandrine method of interpreting Scripture.  Think of Philo and what

he says of the teaching of his Gnôstic Therapeuts.  Think of Clement,

and of Origen with his "Eternal Gospel."  This quickening of the

intuition into knowledge of itself and God, through allegory and symbol

based on philosophy, was the Everlasting Gospel.

So Gnôstic documents were not merely intended to puzzle the outsider,

but the insider as well.  This fact will enable us to appreciate better

Basilides' famous remark about the one or two only who could understand

his system.  His frame of mind was a little like that of a university

examiner after setting a paper.  We need not think that these people

were altogether destitute of humour.  It would be a gross exaggeration,

of course, to say that all the Gnôstic systems described in Irenaeus

and Hippolytus might have been devised by the same man, but it would be

a useful exaggeration, illustrating the extreme anti-literalist point

of view.  Our knowledge of the schools rests for the most part on

reports made upon documents such as these, the purport of which was

entirely missed by those that made them.  They treated Gnôsis as if it

were another kind of "Pistis," or another system of philosophy.  One

doubts very much the correctness of the traditional classification of

schools, which was made by people who were not in very close touch with

them.  One doubts if there was much hostility between these schools,

however much their symbolism may appear to differ on the surface.