Conversation
I'm starting to think that the gnostics were right, that the creator of the universe was fuckin evil. It's trapped us in a prison of flesh and suffering.
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Buddhists have a similar idea in which the neverending wheel of suffering, Samsara, is lorded over by a demon king named Mara. But Samsara wasn't created, it's just an endless cycle of suffering and dying.
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That's kind of like what the gnostics say. It's an endless cycle. One has to extricate themselves from it thru detachment, same as the Buddhists teach. Gnostics also say there is metempsychosis, where souls have to come back and deal with past karma.
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Many Gnostic ideas came from Platonic thought, like the demiurge and transmigration. Greek and India shared between ~ 500-300 bce. So, Buddhism and Gnosticism are sorta cousins.
My issue with many of the Gnostic Gospels is the theism and reliance on Christ as Messiah.
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I read somewhere while back that the Gnostics may have come into contact with Buddhist teachings and been informed by them.
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There's even a theory that the large chunk of Jesus' life before he started teaching was spent in India. Most scholars won't go that far though.
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If I'm understanding gnosticism correctly, they dont believe Christ is a flesh and blood being but is a spiritual force, a kind of frequency or vibration, if you will
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I’m say you right, cause you know more about Gnosticism more than I do
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I say you're probably right. The Gnostics weren't a unified school of thought and some believed weird stuff, but mostly they would probably agree.
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I've been centering on Basilides and his ideas. Carl Jung's Seven Sermons of the Dead, as well.
The project I did on gnosticism was an analysis of Sophia as God's female aspect or form. It was cool, but there's always so much more to learn.