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The Gnostic Therapeutic Bind
I think I’m finally starting to really understand gnosticism. Not so much the complex mythology or the theological yadda-yadda, but the root of the creative impulse which created (and continues to create) all of those “enormous fictions.”
Jeremy recently wrote about how gnosticism doesn’t need to be complicated, and I’d like to expand on those ideas a little, by way of our old friend the double bind. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it essentially involves a communication between two people where contradicting commands are given, and the person being bossed around is unable to satisfactorily comply with either one, thus every option they have is wrong. If you’ve ever been in such a situation in real life, you know the intense pressure that arises. It’s a short route to despair and mental collapse.
But it doesn’t have to be. In the hands of a cunning therapist, putting somebody into a double bind can be a means of forcing them to transform and to transcend their problems by essentially giving them no other choice. I guess it’s kind of sneaky, but it’s also kind of brilliant. If you have a few spare minutes, check out this excellent site about a psychiatrist putting somebody into a therapeutic bind. To summarize, a guy comes to a psychiatrist and says how his life is a mess and nobody likes him. There’s a bit more to it, but the psychiatrist more or less tells the guy to shut up, change his life, and stop bothering him with nonsense. The guy gets really mad at the psychiatrist for acting so unprofessional and being so unhelpful, and then vows to “show that bastard” by - you guessed it - changing his life for the better.
The therapist reverses the man’s headspace from lose-lose equations into win-win, but he has to trick the man to do so. He can’t just calmly tell the man to turn his life around, he has to provoke an emotional flare-out by challenging his values and identity. And the only options that he leaves the patient with are to (1) listen to the therapist, who is telling him his problems are stupid and can be overcome, or (2) get pissed off at the therapist and try to show him that he’s wrong. Either option removes the man from his downward spiral.
Obviously, this is not an approach that will work in all cases. The patient could just as easily have gotten pissed off and then simply done nothing. But evidently, the psychiatrist tailored his response enough to provoke within the man some kind of change, and in a situation like this any change is worthwhile, is a step forward.
But wait - wasn’t I going to talk about gnosticism? Don’t worry. I’m building up to that. Let me give one more illustration before we apply this concept of the therapeutic bind to the subject at hand. There’s a really cool Mexican folk saint called El Nino Fidencio, who was known far and wide for his ability to cure people of illnesses. My favorite stories that I’ve heard about him are these two:
Humorous accounts exist of some of El Niño’s cures. For instance, he is said to have cured a mute by making him stand in front of a swing. El Niño rocked in the swing and bumped into the man repeatedly. The man grew so furious that he found the voice that had eluded him for several years. Similarly, El Niño is said to have tricked a paralytic into standing by tossing sweets just out of her range; she eventually stood up to catch them before she even realized what she was doing.
I love these stories. Both of these guys seem like lovable bastards who may have had unorthodox methods, but who got results and had people’s best intentions at heart. (As an aside, compare these stories to what V does to Evey during the middle part of V for Vendetta, with the whole prison scenario. Is it the same thing or different?)
Okay, so the way that I now am coming to understand not gnosticism but the impulse behind it is by way of this concept of therapeutic binds. It seems as though the purpose of gnostic myth is to trap you into paradoxes of language whose aim is to secretly free you from them. Much like the Zen koans or Sufi parables, the idea is to trap you with an idea that self-destructs, leaving you with nothing. No ideas, just pure experience. The “living information” of Philip K. Dick.
Speaking of Dick, there’s an intriguing passage from one of his essays where he is talking about how the structure of the universe is designed to get you to rebel against it, to overcome the double bind of existence.
“The ultimate lesson learned comes when the teaching machine [the gnostic Demiurge] (or the teacher) is denied, is repudiated. Until that moment comes (if for some of us it ever does) we remain enslaved by the teaching machine — without even being aware of it, having known no other condition.
Therefore the series of lessons by the artifact [Demiurge] are intended to lead to a revolt against the tyranny of the artifact itself, a paradox. It is serving the Urgrund [The Real God] by ultimately bringing us to the Urgrund. This is what is called in theological terminology ‘the secret partnership,’ which is found in the religions of Egypt and India. Gods who appear to combat each other are, on the transmundane plane, colluding for the same goal. I believe this to be the case here. The artifact enslaves us, but on the other hand it is attempting to teach us to throw off its enslavement. It will never tell us to disobey it. You cannot order someone to disobey you; that is both semantically and functionally impossible.”
Or, it’s not impossible. It’s just a double bind. And it can either make you immobile or it can force you to transform, to expand beyond it’s simple dichotomy. The way Dick seems to have gone beyond it was through obsessive myth-making. He tried to construct a “a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction.” Except he didn’t just make one - he made hundreds, thousands even.
So what exactly are the double binds inherent to gnosticism? Others have tried to delineate the basic doctrines of gnosticism, but I think it’s important that we look at these things not as statements of belief, but as challenges or traps to be overcome. We could make all kinds of statements of what Gnosticism *is* in an official sense, but for the sake of argument, let’s look at just a handful of common gnostic ideas:
- The world is an illusion.
- God is insane.
- Heaven is all around you (or inside you).
Again, there are other gnostic ideas we could glom onto here, but these ones are good for the sort of “Whoa!” factor. If you’re new to these ideas, and especially if you have a mainstream Christian background, you’re going to hear this stuff and be like, “What the hell?” Each of these ideas challenges or outright contradicts either our senses or orthodox theology. In order to rectify these paradoxes, the myth-making function of the mind goes into overdrive. And it’s not that these points are ever really solved, but that the intellectual impulses which created them are eventually dissipated and some kind of peace of mind is acquired. Or that’s the theory I’m operating under, at any rate.
We could also look at conspiracy theory in a similar light. Part of what makes it so compelling is that it traps you into a series of double binds when viewed in relation to ordinary common-place culturally accepted knowledge.
- The things we see in the media are not real, but are created by businesses and governments to control us.
- Our trusted leaders are actually child molesters, Satanists, or reptilian aliens.
- Etc.,
Except, it seems that for the most part, conspiracy theory lacks the redemptive element that gnosticism offers. Since it doesn’t necessarily force us to change as in a true therapeutic bind, it may actually serve to deepen our paranoia and our enslavement to the inherent double binds of our culture. Or maybe not. Maybe the only point of any of this is to keep striving, keep questing, keep gnawing at the knots that bind you. Maybe you never get to the *Absolute Truth,* maybe you never loose all the bonds holding you. You just have to keep moving, keep going, as in Faust:
“Whoever strives in ceaseless toil, Him we may grant redemption”.
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March 23rd, 2006 at 3:31 pm
I reached similar conclusions when reading a glut of Zen Master stories online a few months back. Here’s the post in question (only the first part of it applies to your post):
http://patafisix.blogspot.com/2006/01/cosmic-prankster.html
As for overcoming contradictions: Personally, I like contradictions. I don’t think it’s necessary to overcome them. What’s the definition of a Marxist contradiction? Two opposing forces that cannot sustain themselves without the existence of the other? Or something like that?
The key to winning arguments against other people is to expose not only their contradictions but your own. Then, it’s only matter of time– whomever cannot live peacefully with the contradiction will “crack” first. I usually don’t crack, and so I get called sadistic (or in your parlance, a “grade A bastard”)
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:52 pm
Yeah thats sort of the conclusion I’m coming to is that there’s no need to overcome the contradictions, just to live with them, and make something worthwhile out of them, using the creative energy they unleash.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:55 pm
I prefer the word parodox over contradiction. Contradictions is a result of aristotelian logic, and reality does not conform to aristotelian logic. Parodox is the word mystics are more likely to use. The inexplicable, elusive mystery of being is all that there is.
For me personally faith is a connection to the mystery of being and not so much a belief system. MY desire to reslove ‘contradictions’ actually expired after rejecting my catholic faith, reading Krishnamurti, doing yoga and simple meditation exercises.
But recently I began going to Catholic Mass on Sundays. I am a herectic but I feel a closeness to the story of Jesus stronger now than I have ever before after essentially writing Jesus off in a state of existential disgust with life. FOr some reason my inner world resolved that it wanted to reconnect with the mystery of being through the figure of Christ.
It does seem to me gnostics and catholics both agree that Jesus does exist with-in. Whatever means to activating it is all that matters, but it does usually come after a time in the wilderness, aperiod of disillusionment, fighting with the stupidity of beliefs, and not getting sucked dry by cold reason and logic. Now, I feel the beauty of life and I spend more time marvelling than I do asking questions.
Actually the biggest problem I see is the question of suffering. Physical existence is pain, Jesus came in human form to illustrate that spirit ultimately transcends physical suffering? Sorry for the stream of conscious rambling.
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:30 pm
[…] radoxa, salvation through the Double Bind (as we’ve recently been discussing over at Pop Occulture– funny how these ideas, these informational lifefo […]
March 23rd, 2006 at 6:29 pm
opposing forces, by definition, need other opposing forces. and the idea of jesus within will get some so hot that they`ll want to tack someone to tree……….
March 25th, 2006 at 4:03 am
In “Book of Secrets, Vol 5″ (a tremendous and hardly read work) by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, he states that there are two different classes of people: those who need systems (such as the Gurdjieff work, etc.) and those who don’t. I have only met perhaps one or two people who haven’t needed them.
March 25th, 2006 at 4:10 am
To better phrase that: *I* said “I have only met one or two people who haven’t needed a system” as opposed to Rajneesh. Sorry for any confusion.
March 25th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Science is in the process of re-unleashing what may be the mother of all paradoxes on us — it will be ‘interesting’ to see what the reaction is (as I expect to be around for it) :
1. ‘You’ are in every possible sense a product (already more or less proved, but will be obvious when people start getting cloned and we understand the brain more precisely)
2. Morality is circular
3. There is no meaning
I say ‘re-unleashing’ because religion probably already is the fiction-producing reaction to the above facts. It will just become harder to deny them. Fiction as survival strategy…
March 26th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Aditi: I would be careful with Rajneesh, (not to criticize!, far be it from me):
http://home.att.net/~meditation/Osho.html
traxus4420: For sure! If there is an Absolute, then all endeavors will eventually terminate in it, including science. I am expecting cognitiveresearch /evolutionary psych to produce a model of cognition that incorporates self-deception at fundamental deep level, a la the work of Robert Trivers. There is a lot of work going on to try and formally model self-deception, and if these efforts are fruitful, the current debate on evolution will blow up even bigger by forcing the “identity” component of evolutionary psych to the forefront.
If you really accept the “meaningless” interpretation of the phenomenal world, you only have two choices: essential nihilism (Straussian worldview for example) or essential metaphysicalism (”religio perennis” for example).
March 26th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
God, that should be damned interesting!
March 27th, 2006 at 2:41 am
prunesquallori: Aditi: I would be careful with Rajneesh, (not to criticize!, far be it from me): http://home.att.net/~meditation/Osho.html
Hey, I got tossed from a Gnostic discussion group for posting that article! It was very interesting. The person who tossed me was enlightened and in return for being as much, he was willing to let other people project “God” onto him and in return, all they had to do was anything he said. I lasted all of three days before he got so thoroughly annoyed he tossed my ass and erased any post I’d made that implied that even an “enlightened” human being is still a human being.
Which addresses my next point…
Tim: To summarize, a guy comes to a psychiatrist and says how his life is a mess and nobody likes him. There’s a bit more to it, but the psychiatrist more or less tells the guy to shut up, change his life, and stop bothering him with nonsense. The guy gets really mad at the psychiatrist for acting so unprofessional and being so unhelpful, and then vows to “show that bastard” by - you guessed it - changing his life for the better.
Truthfully, that’s only one possibility and it would only work if the guy was invested in “showing up” the therapist. Given that he’s not going to see the therapist anymore, what would be the point? He could live or die and the therapist would likely never know. Likewise, the Zen master who was beating the student might produce a state of altered consciousness but he might also produce a sociopath - he may even be one himself.
When you think about it, therapists are somewhat akin to gurus. People look up to them with the expectation that they’ll have the answers that they don’t have for themselves. The mere act of adding three little letters after your name instills status, as does the apparent state of “enlightenment”.
I’ve had some interesting conversations over the years with people about this idea of “enlightenment” and it varies as to what people think it really is. My rule of thumb is that it’s an evolving process and with exceedingly rare exception, you cannot become fully enlightened if you are still in a body. That means that if you’re still breathing, you’re not. Fact of the matter is that everyone and everything has the potential to be a teacher but if you’re going to follow someone, choose very, very carefully. I’ve met a lot of “enlightened” people who were swimming in ego and a lot of therapists who should not be permitted within 100 feet of any other human beings, particularly wounded ones. In a related vein, here’s an interesting blog: http://whatenlightenment.blogspot.com/
As for complexity, here’s a rule that works: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s that simple.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:27 am
[…] Of course you have questions, though. So far, each of these posts has been designed to get you to ask questions– that’s been my ultimate purpose here all along. Don’t get me wrong; it’s imperative that you do the exercises, but the methodology I’m trying to employ is the Path of Radical Inquiry, the Via Paradoxa, salvation through the Double Bind (as we’ve recently been discussing over at Pop Occulture (funny how these ideas, these informational lifeforms, converge). […]