Orthodox Christianity is just a valid as Gnostic, they are just two different interpretations. The spiritual life has always been challenging and as Jesus said, there are few who find the narrow gate which leads to life. It's not a matter of Gnostic vs. Orthodox but how committed the aspirant is. I don't see how you can possibly not understand that if one were to follow all the teachings of Orthodox Christianity they would so obviously arrive at sainthood despite any flaws or imperfections which might exist in the Orthodox church. Clearly then, it is a matter of personal endeavor/commitment and not which faith you subscribe to. The irony is that you continually list many books (such as the Philokalia or the Interior Castle) written by fully Orthodox authors as your favorite spiritual works. If Orthodox Christianity is a valid path to God (and it must be given that authors you yourself have posted successfully followed that path) then why do you constantly feel the need to belittle it and promote your gnostic heresies? Converting to gnosticism doesn't accomplish a damn thing, what is important is practice the faith correctly, that is prayer, study, good works, regular reception of the sacraments and the like. Both gnostic and Orthodox Christianity say the same thing in the end, that we need to attain union with God. Orthodox stresses the importance of receiving grace through the sacraments to help one along in this process (and there is nothing wrong with that approach).
In the first place, I object to your pejorative use of the word "heresies." Heterodox is more appropriate. Gnosis is not a heretical term, it means 'knowledge,' or an a priori type, not an epistemological a posteriori knowledge gleaned from sense and reason. Certain Gnostic religions were indeed heretical, such as the perverse Carpocratians and Phibionites, but your tone is condescending, condemning, uncritical and clearly prejudicial. Gnostics, or in the idiom you prefer, Christian Gnostics (versus Gnostic Christians)* after Valentinus, recognize levels, or degrees of commitment as you suggest. The one who "lives by faith alone" is considered to be a Psychic Christian, while the Pneumatic Christian is one who 'Knows' by certain experiences of 'grace,' which supersede the 'organ' of faith. Moreover, the Gnostic attitude acknowledges one's personal experience as primary (as a Phenomenologist) and only secondarily finds its corroboration in scriptures. Fortunately for the Gnostic, the Nag Hammadi library was re-discovered, so that the limited canon is not the only guide for such experiences. The typical and ignorant tack is to relegate all personal experiences to the "angel of light," which is to say, Lucifer, and hence a demonic deception. Why is that? It is like all the bald-headed men in my life since I was 18 years old with long hair, who insisted that I cut my hair. The reason is pretty obvious. Envy comes in and tries to deny something that another has. Similarly with spiritual experience. The numerous Gnostic myths are just as 'mythic' as those contained in the canonical Bible, but Gnostics 'Know' this, whereas Psychic Christians take myth for history, midrash and metaphor are mistakenly understood to be literal facts.
I am not a monk living on Mount Athos, Greece, but their writings are powerful methods of contemplation that engage the bodily posture, the breath, and certain psychophysical techniques that are similar to the yogas, and s such, manifest the Hesychastic understanding of the human being as a tripartite body-mind-spirit in such a way as to attempt the smooth integration of all elements. Psychic Christians can become Pneumatic. BTW. Interior Castle was written by a Catholic, Teresa of Avila (you may know this already). I have a childhood friend who made a mistake, got a felony, prison time, and now he has been humbled to cleaning his Greek Orthodox church for no pay with his time. Penance I suppose. He is a drowning man clinging to a plank with his newfound religiosity, encouraged by his religious wife. He has been reading Christian history and theology avidly, and is now where I was in the late 1970s, when I was in seminary, but from his current perspective, HE knows better than me. His religious upbringing never permitted him to imagine that all the acid trips he took (I turned him on initially) revealed anything of what all his theology about theosis, apocatastasis, catharsis, metanoia, and other Greek terms suggest. For him, entheogens are nothing more than "a lot of fun," which I find dishonest and demeaning, because the highest experiences are, as far as I am concerned, the most Holy experiences a human being can have. This is not to say that these experiences are not attained spontaneously, or by severe deprivations (the mythic "40 days and forty nights" of fasting for example).
* The emphasis on adjective or verb says volumes. At some point, a Gnostic Christian may become a Christian Gnostic, wherein his understanding attains to a level of true catholicity, of universality. Certain experiences of Gnosis show one the Perennial Philosophy, wherein any Christian imperialism left, any nurtured thought that Christians or Christianity is superior to all other paths is transcended and one has the Realization that the God that one experiences in Gnosis is not Christian, neither is God Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, or ANY other cultural projection. THEN and only then is one truly "in Christ," in whom "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" - Galatians 3:28. Until that time, one is a 'Christian,' a Christian-colored or Christianized human being, but one is not "in Christ" because all of that self-conscious, self-referencing Christian identity stuff no longer serves a purpose, and indeed it stains the purity of the Truth of the matter. It separates 'us from them,' and clearly then, one is NOT "one in Christ Jesus." So in one sense you are correct about paths leading to the same end, but just as with Gnostics, an Orthodox will quickly cease to be considered Orthodox when he attains to this 'end,' which is Gnosis, and moreover, his former brothers and sisters will reject him for "being in Christ," for being 'a Christ' when they are still merely Christians. Whether you call this hypothetical Christian a Gnostic or a 'Christ' matters little, the effect on one's peers has always been one of alienation if not hostility. Reason enough for the multitudes to hold themselves back. It's lonely at the top of the mountain.
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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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