Just as the ancient Gnostics saw that people fall into 3 essential spiritual categories, I have come to see the same thing. There are the Hylics, who are so literal and so materially-oriented, that they only believe what their senses tell them.
Then there are the Psychics, those people who believe in powers, ghosts, spirits and who are basically superstitious. When they become Christians, their take on Christianity is colored completely by psychic or soulful considerations. Following rules and regs, mostly from Paul, Psychics believe just as observant Jews of the Old Covenant - adherence to very specific behaviors determines one's faith. They will maintain 'sola fide,' 'by faith alone,' as Paul said, while completely ignoring the fact that Paul had spiritual Experiences before he came to preach on faith. Psychic Christians therefore have little or no spiritual experiences which is Gnosis, and have been told by the author John's treatment of 'doubting Thomas,' that it is more blessed to believe without having seen. This takes us to the last category.
The Pneumatic [spiritual] Christians value direct spiritual experience. John wrote that whole passage that demeaned Thomas, who had to 'see' the Risen Christ before he believed. John said 'You have seen and thus believed - blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.' This was the attitude that won in Christianity because there are many Psychic Christians who have not seen the Resurrected Christ as Paul did, or as any of us have who came away from an experience with the conviction that resulted in our own conversions to Christ. But Pneumatic Christians have experiences of the Sacred - even of Christ. And Christ, dear friends, is not a bearded long-haired carpenter. Christ is the Logos - the aspect of God that 'interfaces' with human beings. The Logos, BY ANY OTHER NAME is still the Logos (which is why Neem Karolie Baba could speak of Christ. He was in Christ, in the Logos, in Sat Chit Ananda which is a philosophical description of being-in-God [Logos]). Being in Christ, in Reality, has little or nothing to do with saying that one is a Christian. ALL true holiness derives from the Logos, and so a Taoist, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Sikh all have different names for this ONE true God - and Gnosis makes this Realization possible. Psychic Christians just cannot bridge the gap between Jesus, and Christ. Christ is Awareness of God, and Jesus is THE greatest example there is, in the eyes of Christians - but He is not the only example. To see that others have had Jesus's Experience of God, albeit in lesser degree, is Gnosis. Christianity, through John, insists that Jesus is not merely of a higher degree than other humans. John said that Jesus is of a different 'specie.' In other words, for John (unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus is not first a human being. Jesus is first, Christ - the Logos clothed in human flesh. So the Gnostic Realization of the Universality of Christ - in people of other faiths, and without the Christian mythos, is just 'wrong view' - in a word - heresy. Oh well. What has Christian exclusivity done to increase brotherly love between faiths? NOTHING. Nothing but condemn others - including their Holy Men and Women.
Psychedelics is a word with a very Psychic overtone. It is obviously about the psyche, the soul, the mind. Entheogens (En=within, theo=God, gen=generated) - God-generated-within does not mean God is created within. The being of a person is changed so that God's Presence is known (Gnosis). It is like the person is a plain bar of iron, oriented North and South, and hammered repeatedly, that plain bar of iron is changed into a magnet with a very discernible magnetic field around it. Now we all exist within the Earth's magnetic field, but we can 'generate' a microcosmic field within the macrocosmic field about the planet, with new properties and powers. Likewise our being on Entheogens. We may Psychically believe that God is omnipresent, but then, with the Entheogen, God manifests in "a superabundance of Reality," which is "the irruption of the sacred into the world" (Mircea Eliade). We don't create the magnetic field, we use knowledge to align the structure of the iron to 'channel' an existing field in a 'superabundant' locus. The same with Entheogens. We don't create God, but we may "occasion" (Huston Smith) a mystical Experience wherein God manifests within our Heart Cave in a 'superabundant' degree.
So, the dictionaries have a new word to learn. My own Webster's Collegiate explains this using the term "acid head," which was a recent acquisition from the colloquial at the time that dictionary was printed. And while we're on the subject...just because the Gospel of Thomas is not in the canonical Bible, it is just ignorant to ignore its take on Who and What Christ is. Christ is not just for 'Christians.'
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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