Christian & Gnostic Ideas about God in the Light of the Universal Path
For Eric. What I am going to say here is the understanding of these topics from the universal point of initiation. This point of view can be quite different to the religious or traditional understanding. Everyone can and should decide for himself what he believes or not. And so I pay respect to the individual beliefs. This means inter alia that I am not going to challenge anyone belief system. In best case the presented ideas have inspiring effects. Peace be upon you!
First of all we must differentiate between the exoteric teachings and understanding of the Christian religion and the inner, esoteric teachings. To put it simple – there are worlds between them. The exoteric understanding is very limited and shows a great lack of real knowledge, the right comprehension of the Christian teachings and ideas. The exoteric teachings offer a lot of misinterpretations and also profanation of higher and highest mysteries. But this is typical for the outer appearance of religions. So if you are interested in the hidden truth, the right interpretation, the revelation of higher mysteries then you have to study and understand the esoteric, the inner teachings of the Christian religion. Here is the challenge to distinguish gold from lead or the wheat from the chaff. Only when you are initiated in the universal path you will be able to do this easily.
And this is also the problem with the Gnostic tradition and their ideas about God, the demiurge and creation. The psychological filter of human beliefs is coloring reality. You must put off your sun glasses, the glasses of your individual belief system to see the naked truth.
But let´s go back to the Christian ideas. From the Christian point of view we have Jesus as the son of God who is sacrificing himself to liberate people from their sins. Besides this, he offers healing to those who suffer and he teaches love and forgiveness. There is the Father, the Holy Spirit but no Divine Mother. There are heaven and hell, the angels, demons and the doom of the world with the judgement day. So far so good.
I don´t really want to point at all ideas of the exoteric leaders of the Christian Church. I prefer to focus in main on the inner teachings and the universal point of view so that you as the reader can compare for yourself the exoteric ideas with the esoteric ones.
The life path of Jesus is filled with symbolism, a universal valid symbolism. The person Jesus is the symbol for the incarnated divine spirit which is born in the stable, among the animals, creation on the physical plane. Indeed, we as original spirits have an animal body which we need to express ourselves in the material world, the big stable. Jesus is full of idealism and offers wonderful teachings to the people but the people are not ready. The spirit throws pearls before the swine, the light shines into the darkness but the darkness cannot grasp it. This is unfortunately normal. Immature, young and raw souls are not able to receive and use higher teachings of love and unity. So Jesus gathers a few mature souls for direct teaching and for the other people he uses allegories which in the end only initiates understand completely. As he is in the world but not from it, he causes a lot of trouble and riot. He disturbs the order of society and religious dogma. It is the typical incompatibility of the nature of spirit towards the nature of the material people. So he talks about bringing separation and the sword to his followers and their families, social structures. As Jesus, the spirit is intolerant and a menace to the material society and outer religion he must be hunted, tortured and killed in a most brutal way. He bears the cross. The spirit always bears the cross during his incarnation in the material world. The true cross is the symbol of creation, of our material world with all its hardship, suffering, deadly for the divine spirit. So indeed the spirit sacrifices itself in the material world which means it dies at the cross. By dying in this world of matter, the spirit is set free, is liberated again to go back to heaven where it comes from. Jesus returns to the Father, the Great Spirit. This life path is what we all experience more or less consciously, more or less painfully. The more spiritual and mature a soul is, the more it has to suffer in this world, bearing its cross. So in conclusion we can say that this story is the typical story of the initiate who incarnates here, who offers higher teachings, who is hunted by the profane people and in worst case even gets killed. And certainly, from time to time high initiates like Jesus incarnate to give new impulses for the spiritual evolution of mankind. We can find similar stories in nearly all cultures at all times.
So Jesus was a high initiate, a so-called Quabbalist or better said a true theurgist which means that his nature was as divine as the nature of the macrocosmic divine Spirit, the Father. And due to this, he was able to use the divine language to create like the Father does. Further on, he was acknowledged by all so-called angels as a true representative of God. (When you read about the stories of his childhood then you can see that they perfectly match his divine nature.) This all means that he was a son of God in the sense that he was of the same nature like God. In fact God has several children of the same nature, the true and highest initiates in every religion or culture. The divine nature is sleeping in the normal human soul and by undergoing the spiritual training everyone can and will one day unfold 1:1 his divine, macrocosmic nature.
One main point in these mysteries is that Jesus with the focus on the Father is a so-called sun worship. The divine spirit is symbolized and worshipped in form of the sun and the Father, the male aspect. The mother is in main connected to the term creation, also to the moon, the virgin and can be understood as the Holy Spirit. In the Christian religion we can see that their followers have had a great focus in worshipping Maria which follows a long tradition of goddesses from pagans, old Greeks and Egyptians, etc. (In general do we find the old gods and goddesses in new cloths and names in later traditions and religions.)
This idea to follow the tradition of the sun worship of former religions and to identify with the Spirit is a main contrast to the Muslim religion which has a focus on the female aspect, the mystical idea to subject yourself to God. When you take a look at the flag of the Muslims then you see the moon as the main symbol.
It is identification versus submission. Male versus female. From the universal point of view we certainly need both, – the active and the passive attitude, both poles of polarity. Due to this natural need we can discover both religions influencing each other, inspiring each other.
When we think about the old Templars then we can see that they were very busy with going beyond external limitations, gathering higher knowledge and integrating all what was of value independent from religions. Although they were of Christian belief, they learned a lot from all other religions around the Mediterranean Sea. And again as usual as those who show the true Spirit are hunted and killed by the material ones, the Templars were persecuted and killed by the Church and its worldly power.
One important point is the doom of the world, the judgement day. Here the higher teachings focus on the normal experience of every soul when it has left the physical body, entering the higher realms that the soul is confronted with all its deeds, the good ones and the bad ones, that the conscience is awake. In fact the soul is judging itself to balance its karma in the next incarnation. The doom of the world indicates also the end of one cycle of evolution, the end of the Piscean Age. (In general there are often several levels of interpretation.)
During history many important, positive teachings have been turned into their dark opposite by the Christian followers. Originally Jesus, the incarnated Divine Spirit was worshipped in his vital, teaching and blessing appearance but today people worship his dead body at the cross and believe in the need of suffering in the material world.
Now let´s turn to the Gnostic ideas. The Gnostic followers were interested in higher teachings, the inner and esoteric knowledge and path of liberation, of enlightenment. This has been certainly contrary and dangerous for the external Christian Church. The Church does not want liberation and enlightenment for their followers as this destroys the ruling hierarchy of priests. As usual such things are a matter of keeping power and control over the masses.
The problem of the Gnostic teachings is that they have a big focus on the darkness of the material world while they see the light only in the highest realms. This point of view is very extreme and not paying respect to reality.
Creation is built on laws, mathematics and physics. These laws don´t care about human ideas, likes and dislikes. They are in charge. When you build a world on laws then you cannot pick out what you like and ignore what you don´t like. Quite the contrary you are forced to accept all aspects, the whole diversity of phenomena.
To understand this better: Imagine you develop mathematics. So you are forced to accept and provide all numbers, even if you don´t like number 2, 5 or number 11. And you must provide all mathematical functions even if you don´t like to subtract or to divide.
This means that the principle of polarity in its positive and negative aspects brought creation into being and simply must be accepted as it is. It is more the case that we human beings are asked to make decisions how we want to live – in beneficial resonance with the laws or against the laws which causes suffering.
To make it clear, – we find the constructive and the destructive principle on all planes of existence. We only have differences in the laws of nature on the different planes of existence which let them appear as more divine and happy or more about hardship and suffering. The material world is a school like Bardon says, meant to offer conditions for making progress. Dwelling in heaven does not require and allow any form of progress.
Creation is designed in a way that the Divine Spirit can experience itself in countless creatures, undergoing a development towards perfection in the individual. As a god-human you experience yourself as a human and as an eternal being, a spirit in a body.
So all follows a higher sense and it is up to the human being to search for the sense and to realize it – and not to complain, ignore and to follow own projections.
The Gnostic tradition has invented the demiurge who thinks that he is God himself but in fact just copies the original divine creation on lower planes which causes suffering and darkness. This is certainly a nice idea but at the same time a complete misunderstanding of reality. It corresponds also with the unhealthy focus on the bible and stories from these times.
In reality we have a comprehensive hierarchy of divine spirits, deities, gods and goddesses which are a revelation of the One Divine Spirit beyond creation. This hierarchy is indeed the administration of creation where every deity has its specific field of activity to maintain the function of creation. All deities know very well about the Highest Spirit and they all work in perfect harmony and order. We can also say that the macrocosmic hierarchy of deities is the mental body of God with all his virtues, powers, knowledge, etc. united by the cosmic consciousness beyond time and space.
So this is something completely different to Gnostic beliefs and the superficial idea of angels and a demiurge.
The Gnostic idea of escapism also does not help at all. Quite the contrary we are asked to face the challenges here in the material world to grow personally and to serve the evolution of mankind.
In general I want to speak out a warning about all traditional, limited teachings as they origin in first place from humans and not directly from the universal source itself. So there are always a lot of questionable teachings, lots of half-truths, misunderstandings, and so on. And you can really waste a lot of time by thinking about them, eventually also getting lost in their traps. Better focus in first place on the universal teachings and then you can easily understand all traditional teachings and you are able to distinguish right from wrong.
At last – already in the ancient teachings of India we find statements about the Highest Spirit. It is said there that the Highest shines stronger than a million suns and that no god is able to bear this Light and Power. The Highest is simply too powerful to be endured by creatures. For this reason there is Metatron, the direct intermediary and representative of the Highest for creation. Metatron supplies the Divine Light in a way that creation can cope with it. We could also see Metatron as the keeper of the source. Metatron is worshipped as the Lord of the Light, in old Egypt as Aton and in old Greece as Helios. It is no wonder why there always have been traditions worshipping the sun or a sun god.
In the long journey of initiation you will convince yourself about the absolute reality beyond human ideas.
I hope I was able to give some hints for a better understanding of these topics.
Very interesting, I’m glad that you took the time to Clarify the exoteric Christian Teachings. Then the Original Christian Teachings taught be Jesus or what some call the esoteric teachings, and then the gnostic teachings. The Gnostic Teachings are very interesting, because they do have doomy gloomy outlook on the world.
My question is : Is there any truth to there doom and gloom . How far should we go down their path. I have looked into some of the teachings of Sam Aun Weor . He has a lot of interesting things to say in many of his writings . For one he stresses the need to protect and preserve the male seed. This is the far extreme of Bardon who basically says one can do quite okay with sexual moderation and then Sam Aun Weor who sees sex as a opportunity to reach liberation but prohibits the spilling of seed , which probably originates from some form of Indian Tantra . Is Sex one of the Traps of the Demi-Urge and this 3D reality or have the gnostics just gone too far ?
Thanks Eric, people have always the choice – you can work on improving life on earth or you can wait for the doom.
There were extreme ideas in the Gnostic movements to preserve the male seed or even to focus on masturbation only to stop souls from incarnating in this “evil” world. Something different is certainly to use the sexual energies for alchemy. Here Mantak Chia wrote good books.
I can only warn about extreme positions and strange ideas based on movies in the cinemas. Mainstream esoterism is not the same like serious spiritual work and studies.
Thank You, and yes Mantak Chia definitely, is genuine and has great teachings, and is balanced probably a better way to go than many of the gnostic teachings.
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