>the world is le evil and out to get me>everything is created for my harm>I have to constantly rebel against le evil world where I'm constantly being hunted by le big bad demiurge Constant unending paranoia, the inability to distinguish between how objects relate to yourself in your environment, and the incessant feeling of always being hunted & watched by nefarious entities are the core symptoms of a human with medically diagnosed schizophrenia. The ancient gnostics were just schizophrenics before humanity knew what schizophrenia is, and the schizophrenics banded together and made a religion around their schizophrenia.
>>18548000>>the world is le evil and out to get me>>everything is created for my harm>>I have to constantly rebel against le evil world where I'm constantly being hunted by le big bad demiurge
I would say that's just a bad understanding of what gnostic teachings are really likeThere are some people who naturally have an openness to teachings about denial of self and transcendence, and those people tend to be drawn to religions like Buddhism and gnosticismAnd then there's some people who aren't, and they can't help but interpret that denial of self as denial of an objective outward reality, because they're stuck in that frame of referenceIf you're trying to interpret figures like the demiurge as literal deities who literally have lion heads and snake bodies and so on, you've lost the plot(Of course there are also some people who interpret the texts that way and find themselves drawn to gnosticism, and those people are misguided in a different way)
>>18548000All religions are just schizophrenia.
>>18548000>>the world is le evil and out to get me>Constant unending paranoia, the inability to distinguish between how objects relate to yourself in your environment, and the incessant feeling of always being hunted & watched by nefarious entities I don't disagree with you but these things in particular are also part of normal Christianity.
>>18548000Eh, I’m not schizophrenic (that’s a very specific condition that isn’t just being delusional) but I’ve had psychotic episodes before that got me put on meds and I’m hesitant to call them schizophrenic or psychotic because while I had similar ideas my thoughts were also very disorganized and it would’ve been pretty hard for me to collect and organize them neatly enough to create a semi popular religion out of it
The gnostic texts like the Apocryphon of John show an awareness that creation (the "world") emanates outward from the mind, rather than the mind being a tiny piece of creation that ultimately has no agency over itThe Monad is framed as a cosmic mind whose first act of creation is becoming self-aware. The awareness is personified as Barbelo. Barbelo is the initial emanation of the Monad that occurs when the Monad perceives Itself.Through this awareness of "self," the Monad then creates an image of Itself that contains all of Its properties but remains separate from Itself. This is the Logos or Son or Christ, the first act of creation. All other aspects of creation then issue outward from this initial image of self, as when you first identify and distinguish the self it necessitates also that there is a "not-self" or things apart from the self from which it can be distinguished.The trinity of gnosticism is thus characterized as being made of 1.) The luminous, uncreated mind that permeates everything, 2.) That mind's image of self that it creates, and 3.) The mind's perception and awareness of self that forms the link between the two and imparts characteristics between one and the other.And to find true, perfect unity with what we call God or the Monad or the Father, it then requires peeling away these two outer layers of self and self-awareness and merging into the luminous mind which has no distinction of self or non-self, this or that, mine and the other, and which is thus infinite in potential despite being ultimately still and quiescent.Other faiths have also understood this relation to the luminous mind and given it names like Nirvana.But conflicts arise with more dogmatic faiths that elevate outward creation to something divine and separate from the self. They characterize Christ as another being separate from the self to be worshipped. They teach that by denying creation and the "world" we are denying Christ and God, which is blasphemy.
>比丘當知 是諸外道 所言我者 如虫食木 偶成字耳Monks, know that what these outer paths speak of as "self" is like a worm eating at a piece of wood, so that by chance a letter appears, and no more.>是故如來 於佛法中 唱是無我 爲調衆生故 爲知時故 説是無我 有因縁故 亦説有我 如彼良醫 善知於乳 是藥非藥 非如凡夫 所計吾我Therefore does the Thus-Come-One extol "non-self" in the Buddha Dharma. It is to train sentient beings, and because He knows the occasion, that he teaches this "non-self." But where there is cause and condition for it, He also teaches that there is a self, just as this good doctor knows well where milk can be a medicine and where it is not. It is not like what the common folk reckon to be a "self.">凡夫愚人 所計我者 或言大如拇指 或如芥子 或如微塵 如來説我 悉不如是What ignorant people and the common folk take to be the "self," they sometimes say is the size of the thumb, or of a mustard seed, or of an atom; the Thus-Come-One's teaching of self is nowhere like any of these.>是故説言 諸法無我 實非無我Therefore does He teach, that in all phenomena there is no "self," while in reality neither is there a "non-self.">何者是我 若法 是實是眞 是常是主 是依性不變易者 是名爲我What is the "self?" If a phenomenon is true and genuine, if it is eternal and sovereign, if its nature it takes as its basis is unchanging, this then is called the "self.">如彼大醫 善解乳藥 如來亦爾 爲衆生故 説諸法中 眞實有我Just as the great doctor well understands the medicine of milk, so too does the Thus-Come-One, for the sake of sentient beings, teach that in all phenomena there truly is a "self.">汝等四衆 應當如是 修習是法You of the four-fold assembly should thus cultivate this Dharma.This true, unchanging self is the Monad
>>18548076conversely, asking for empirical evidence of proofs that anyone can understand intuitively is textbook schizophrenia as well. you seem to be massively projecting here.
>>18548000>>I have to constantly rebel against le evil world where I'm constantly being hunted>the incessant feeling of always being hunted & watched by nefarious entitiesSounds like my Orthodox Chritian mom at her worst. "Everything is sin, there are demons hiding everywhere, in books and in music and in cartoons and in your very thoughts etc." She got better eventually.
Unironically the only accurate usage of the term "schizophrenia" itt: >>18548143
>>18548000For a Hylic, it might look like schizophrenia.
We can only come to the Father through the Son, and we can only penetrate into and arrive at union with the Monad and the true Self via this outward, creative, and discriminating image of the "self"But it's a different approach fundamentally from deifying the self as something to be worshiped.And seeing through the outer, illusory self into the pure and unconditioned luminous mind beneath is also different fundamentally from tossing away all notions of "self" as garbage.The middle path of the Buddhas and the gnostics is more nuanced and very few are predisposed to it in its undiluted form
Schizos reproduce by raping others mentally.
>>18548000Though that sounds a bit more like paranoia.At the end of the day what sets apart schizophrenia from other things is getting all your brain channels fucked and raped in all ways.Schizos are like those girls getting fucked by tentacles in those animus.They start experiencing what other people experience, they become targets of things they wouldn't have had contact with normally, and so on.All so they can have access to everything and think they will find the final answers this way because then they can make all manner of connections that others might not make normally (sometimes for the best but they like to think they will be a step ahead of everyone else).Selfish bastards.
>>18548000The core notion that is common to most belief systems labelled as gnosticism, that the reality we inhabit was created by a being that was either incompetent or outright malicious, is a perfectly reasonable response to inhabiting said reality. It gets silly when they start trying to add in a million levels of secret emanations.
>>18548263So when you sit down to eat dinner, your fork is part of some nefarious agenda from the Demiurge because all of creation was made with evil intent & all material objects are inherently part of this evil as a result? That literally sounds like schizophrenia. The idea that all objects in your environment are part of an overarching nefarious scheme intended for your harm is one of the most prominent symptoms that schizophrenics display because of the inability to differentiate their own relation to objects in their environment. If a schizo sees a stranger riding their bike, the automatic assumption is that the biker is watching/stalking them because they can't make distinctions between how relevant anything is in relation to them, and the distortion of reality to the extent of everything bleeding together in a way that is percieved like someone on acid is part of this inability to draw the distinction as all memories, thoughts, & objects in the environment are instantly presumed to be part of a nefarious agenda combined with unending paranoia.
>>18548491No, the fork was made by a cutlery company, the cutlery company just exists in a universe made by a shithead.
>>18548500So you don't believe that material reality is evil, which means you aren't a Gnostic. Ancient Gnostic religions such as Manichaeism would eat one singular meal a day because their idea was that all of material reality is inherently evil therefore the ideal was to distance yourself from material objects as much as possible; the goal was to sit in a room with the "elect" where you don't interact with the world because it's nefarious.
>>18548000Where did the retarded gnostics get the idea that the demiurge was evil? Plato's demiurge was the benevolent creator god actually.
>>18548505Not all Gnostics think the material reality is ‘evil’ some of them think the Demiurge was just kinda retarded and sucked at making a world
>>18548685That's conjecture & ideologically opposed to what Gnostic beliefs are by definition. Organized systems of belief have exact definitions that pertain to their own dogma & ontology; definitions aren't relativistic liquids that can be shaped into whatever you think you would like it to be. By definition you aren't a Gnostic because you do not believe material reality is inherently evil. If you're positing that material reality is a neutral playing field created without moral intentions then that's a Deist ontology.
>There are two people occupying the identical house, a beautiful house, where one of them censures its construction and its builder but nevertheless keeps living in it, and the other does not censure him and says rather that the builder made it most proficiently, and yet he is waiting for the time to come when he will be released from the house and will no longer require it.
>>18548021>>18548000Gnosticism is the perfect religion for 4chan which is why it's so popular on 4chan.>What if le Yahweh was actually le evil and flawed being and Jesus was actually the Son of the real God?>What if God is a failed abortion/accident from a female angel named Sophia?Lol.
>>18548775Same with discussions of Buddhism here, it devolves into people arguing their uninformed assumptions back and forth to each other
>>18548775Saying material reality and the demiurge are outright "evil" isn't a definite characteristic of Gnosticism at all imo. Even the archetypal Gnostic text, the apocryphon of John, says of Yaldabaoth, "He is ignorant darkness," "He is blasphemous through his thoughtlessness," and "He didn’t understand what was happening, for he lived in ignorance." And the second archetypal Gnostic text, the Hypostasis of the Archons, takes care to say, "Their [the archons'] chief is blind, and he's given the name Samael, which is said to mean "blind god."Matter itself likewise isn't really characterized as "evil" per se from what I've read. According to a description of some complicated probably late Valentinian myth by Ireneaus, matter came from the passions of Sophia in her fall, which were based on ignorance. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103104.htm>...she was in the greatest perplexity. All these feelings were associated with ignorance>For from her tears all that is of a liquid nature was formed; from her smile all that is lucent; and from her grief and perplexity all the corporeal elements of the world. A simpler version of the idea might be found in the Valentinian Gospel of Truth:>ignorance of the Father caused anguish and terror, and the anguish grew thick like a fog, so that no one could see – Error was strengthened. It worked on its own matter in vain, not knowing the Truth.And in the Valentinian system matter wasn't something to be escaped, but to be consumed. Also from the Gospel of Truth:>Within Unity each one will receive themselves, and within knowledge they’ll purify themselves from multiplicity into Unity, consuming matter within themselves like fire, and darkness by light, death by lifeMeanwhile Hypostasis of the Archons describes matter as having come from a shadow, which is pretty vague.>A veil exists between the world above and the realms that are below; and shadow came into being beneath the veil; and that shadow became matter.
>>18549365 (cont.)In other words, the overwhelming emphasis in Gnostic texts to me is that most everything wrong with the world is built on ignorance and delusion. To the extent that there is outright evil, it's only an epiphenomenon of ignorance and delusion, not an essence in its own right.
>>18549365The Gospel of Philp says it more plainly than any of them: "Ignorance is the mother of all evil" or "The root of all evil is the lack of gnosis" depending on your translation. It's said after an an analogy is given where wickdnees is compared to a tree whose root is hidden, which many people have tried to chop down partially, but Jesus pulled it up by its roots.The analogy is surprisingly similar to this quote by Thoreau, since I doubt he could have read Philip, though Philip doesn't follow it up like he does by suggesting that money and time devoted to the needy could be worsening their problems.https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/777718-there-are-a-thousand-hacking-at-the-branches-of-evil
