Lash Update!

John Lash added some further insights into our conversation about the role [...]

Tim, you are wasting your valuable time with distorted allusions like this.

I appreciate the advice, but obviously this is an issue I need to work out for myself. So though it may seem like a waste of time to you, there’s something in this (whether you said it or me) that I need to understand and reconcile before I can proceed.

The purpose of Gnostic practice was to prepare the initiates to educate, teach and guide, to cultivate the genius in humanity, the dose of divine intelligence. [...] They were champions of human potential. As educators of the ancient world, they helped others to learn and self-actualize.

Well those are exactly the questions I am asking here, John. What’s the best way for people to do that? I don’t pretend to have the final answer. Just like you, I have to judge this based on my own experience and my own perhaps limited perception. I’m more than willing to admit that everything I have said or will say is totally flagrantly wrong. And I’m perfectly happy with that, because I’m just making my way through the world as it comes to me. Your suggestions and clarifications are duly noted and always welcome, as are I hope mine.

If nothing else, we seem to be united by a shared interest in examining our own beliefs and those of others, correct? This to me is all part of that process.

Since you personally saw fit to respond to this remark – and, I might point out, to ignore the other, more revealing language in which it is embedded, where I talk about the passion to learn – I would like to take a moment to respond to your response, as briefly as possible.

In the first place, it is not my “belief” that belief-change is difficult for people. This is a studied observation formed over many years. Imagine that I said, “Trekking in the Himalayas is difficult for most people.” Or “Serial endosymbiosis theory is difficult for most people.” I think you would accept those statements as rational assessments that anyone might make, especially someone who’s done some trekking or studied evolutionary biology. When it comes to belief, however, everyone is an expert, and everyone has something at stake, including you.

By stating my personal assessment that most people have neither the inclination nor the intelligence to tackle belief-change, I am not putting myself in an elite category and shutting the door to the world at large. I fail to see how stating my personal view excludes anyone from the quest. Genuine spirituality is a self-selection process, a volunteer path. I can neither exclude nor enlist anyone, and I don’t. I would never presume to “give people permission” (your words) to enter the quest.

Perhaps what you’re responding to here is my deliberately non-encouraging stance. I could have said, for instance, “The Gnostic path of spirituality presents a steep challenge, but we’re living in an exceptional time when Gnosis is being recovered, so many people can rise to that challenge, and more and more people are attracted to do so.” I could have said that and come out looking pretty good, but I didn’t say it because I don’t think it’s true. I am not telling anyone personally that they are stupid or unfit for this quest. I have never spoken that way to anyone, as my friends and colleagues will attest. I am saying that I don’t think genuine, deep and enduring involvement in the Gnostic revival is going to be everyone’s cup of Starbucks.

I do not belong to “the counter-culture and alternative religion crowd,” but you are free to put me in that category, if that suits you. I am not engaged in forming a private club or cult following where I control all the rules and membership (your words). Tim, you are wasting your valuable time with distorted allusions like this. Are you responding to what I actually said, or dodging phantoms in your own mind? Why proceed on what you infer from what I appear to say, rather than get into the substance of what I really mean?

You site is a prime example of what I mean. It sparkles with intelligence. Your treatment of Gnostic materials and themes is lucid, relevant, lively, probing. I can’t compare your blogroll to other Gnostically oriented blogs on the Net, which I haven’t visited, but I would be surprised, and delighted, to find that anyone is doing as well as you are to integrate, clarify, and apply this arcane material. The day there are a hundred sites as lively and intelligent as yours treating Gnosticism, give me a sign and I’ll repent my ruthless elitism. Come to think of it, I’ll repent when there are ten sites.

But you may say, Why limit the possibilities with a negative, discouraging attitude? How can I, John Lash, tell how far this Gnostic thing is going to go? Well, I can’t, of course.
If I exhibit what appears to be a negative attitude, making offensive remarks about human stupidity, you might consider that I being brutally honest about my own experience on this path, that’s all. I am not enforcing or imposing my criteria on anyone. I do not gloat and sneer at the stupidity of the human species, although this attitude is clearly demonstrated in Gnostic texts. The degeneration of our innate sapience, the breakdown of the divine intelligence endowed in us, breaks my heart. It’s sad as hell, and has marked me deeply. I accept that you and others were offended by my language, but your response says less about what I said, and why I said it, then it does about what you need or want Gnosis to be. You want it to be accessible to everyone. Fine, I wish you the best. I’m telling you that as far as I know, it isn’t, never was, and never will be. “Not every soul is of truth, nor of immortality.” The Apocalypse of Peter, 75.12.

However, the fruits of Gnosis, the things seen and learned by those on that quest, are not hoarded by those who discover them. The purpose of Gnostic practice was to prepare the initiates to educate, teach and guide, to cultivate the genius in humanity, the dose of divine intelligence. Although initiation was a rare and secret experience, gnostikoi did not keep the primordial revelation to themselves, they generously imparted it. They were champions of human potential. As educators of the ancient world, they helped others to learn and self-actualize. In every instance where they encountered human stupidity, in the form of blocked and unrealized potential, they attempted to overcome it and enlighten it. I do the same, in my limited and fallible way. I just do not pretend that it an easy task and a popular calling, or that the odds of success are favorable.

ZEBEDEE
(indignant)
We can hear fine. It’s not us. Can’t
you be more… clear.

Jesus thinks for a moment. He is also hiding annoyance.

JESUS
I’m the farmer. The farmer’s me.
–
I think that sums it up. For some the seed is stolen, for some the seed dries up because they’re too hard to open themselves up to it, but a special few are like rich soil who allow the seed to enter them and reap the harvest.

i think that people who think people are too stupid to change their beliefs are too stupid to change their beliefs, so there.

i see stupidity everywhere but i’ve never seen this phantasm called intelligence. i’ve seen more evidence for ultraterrestrials. people with pretensions to intelligence are just the ones with the best disguise.

It takes exceptional intelligence… to grasp the Gnostic message.

no, it just takes a bump on the head.

Come on in, the water’s fine!

i like that