|
A
Catalog of Findings
The Church of Gnostic Luminism will
compile a Canon of Revealed Truth: a compendium of recognized discoveries about
reality that can be independently verified by each aspirant to Revelation. This Canon will not be an inflexible
system of dogma; on the contrary, it will always be subject to refinement, revision, and
expansion — for there is no final plateau of revelation. However much we know, there is always
more to learn. The Canon will consist of a catalog of
findings to date, to be used as a suggestive guide by individuals — always subject to
each one’s own Illumination.
General
Agreement
Membership in the Church of Gnostic
Luminism will be defined as general agreement with the ideas contained in our Canon of
Revealed Truth, as published and periodically updated by the Church — with the
understanding that the member need not agree with it in every particular.
Essential Points
Among the most important primary
principles of the Canon of Revealed Truth will be the following:
Unity of All Life:
The Church of Gnostic Luminism will
recognize as a primary Revealed Principle that all life in the universe is ultimately a
single Being.
Self of All Life:
All living beings are connected as are
the individual cells of our bodies; every being is part of a larger being, and every being
is composed of smaller beings. There is a commonality of
consciousness between all living beings, great and small. At its esoteric core, every entity
shares a common identity with the Self of All Life — for there is, and can be, only
one Life extant in this infinite universe — and we are it! There is in reality one Actor playing
an infinitude of roles. In the language of the Vedas, the
individual self (Atman) is one with the Universal Self or World Soul (Brahman). In the Hebrew tradition, the universal
Self is called “I Am That I Am” (as if to say, I am any being who can say
“I am”). In Christian mysticism, the
all-inclusive Supreme Identity is the paraklete, the Holy Spirit that indwells the
redeemed, identical with the Logos through which the phenomenal world came into being
(Gospel of John 1:1), and identical as well with the Hebrew ruach elohim, the
“Spirit of Life” blown into Adam’s nostrils (Genesis 2:7).
The Great Mother: The planet of our birth is a living
being, a Goddess; we have our individual lives within the continuity of Her
Life. The Sun is the source of the life of
Earth and all of Her component beings; a God. The energy that flows forth from our
Sun, and from every Sun, is identical with the energy found in the core of every atom:
this energy is Spirit, Life, and Consciousness. It is personified in the Thelemic
tradition as the god Hadit. The living suns of infinite space
together make up the body of Nuit, the Cosmic Goddess, the Great Mother, “in whom we live and move and
have our being.” (The Goddess will play an
important role in the religious ceremonies and teachings of the Church of Gnostic Luminism
as the primary object of “worship” or passionate ideation.)
Universal
Consciousness: An essential Recognized Revealed
Principle will be that consciousness is an inherent element of all life — and,
since all that exists is alive, consciousness permeates all that is.
To be
is to be conscious.
Every living being is conscious to
some degree all the time. The state we commonly refer to as
“unconsciousness,” as in deep sleep or coma, is in reality merely a primordial
level of consciousness. Even a rock is conscious to some
degree. (An old Sufi proverb states: “God
sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man.”)
Consciousness is a Basic
Force: The human brain does not generate
consciousness as an “epiphenomenon,” the way a generator produces electricity,
as some materialist theories suppose; rather, the brain acts like a radio
receiver, picking up the “broadcast” of consciousness. Consciousness is prior to, not a
product of, material forms. It is the Prime Mover, the First
Cause, the Supreme Being of theology. It is one of the primary forces of the
universe, like gravity and the nuclear forces that bind atoms together.
Samadhi: Consciousness is focused differently
in different forms of life, but ultimately, all beings share the same “I Am That I
Am” identity. At its core, deep in the
“unconscious mind,” every living being is aware of the unitary nature of
consciousness and of the interconnectedness of all life. The part of each being that lives in
this awareness all the time is called the “higher self” or the “silent
watcher” in Theosophy;
in the Vedas it is the atman;
in Thelema it is the Augoeides;
it is referred to by Abramelin as the “holy
guardian angel”; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn refers to it as the “Genius”;
the ancient Gnostics knew it as the Logos; to the ancient Egyptians it was Asar-un-nefer;
in Christian mysticism it is “Christ in us, the hope of glory”;
in Buddhism it is the Adi-Buddha or the “Buddha Nature.”
The goal of Gnostic Luminism is to
establish a permanent connection between our “normal” awareness and this
“higher self,” the part of us that always enjoys the ultimate transcendental
awareness of cosmic unity. The connection is made by discovering
and eliminating the illusory barriers between the parts of one’s self. When this connection is established,
the experience known as Samadhi is the result: full awareness of and complete
identification with the infinite / eternal unity rather than, or in addition to, the
spatiotemporal particularity of the “ego” or Earth lifetime identity channel.
Focusing of
Consciousness: The Gnostic Luminist will learn to
gain voluntary control over the focusing of consciousness between “higher” (more
inclusive) and “lower” (more tightly focused) states. Techniques will be developed and
taught for shifting between the “exterior” awareness (the realm of the ego,
“normal” reality, objective rationalist materialism, maya) and the
“interior” transcendental awareness of cosmic unity. With the proper training and
technology, it will be possible to voluntarily shift one’s awareness so as to
cognitively apprehend the subjective experience of life at any of its levels of
manifestation, from the subatomic to the metagalactic; to subjectively experience each of the
stages of organic evolution, past, present and future; to experientially grasp the
microcosmic (particular) and macrocosmic (universal) qualities of existence; to comprehend the human and the
divine.
Life Energy:
An essential Revealed Principle will
be that life itself is a form of energy analogous to the spectra of energy known to
present-day physics (heat, light, radiation, etc.). Classically, this life energy has been
referred to as “spirit” or “soul.” In Greek, it is pneuma; in
Hebrew, ruach or neschama; in Latin, anima; in Sanskrit, prana,
shakti, and kundalini; in Chinese, chi; to Rosicrucian alchemists,
“vril” or the “odic force”; and it is known by many other terms in
different times, languages, and cultures. In the 20th century the term
“orgone” was coined by Wilhelm Reich to refer to the same “life
energy,” and he began developing technologies for measuring and interacting with it.
Unfortunately his work was crushed by
political repression. Hopefully Reich’s work will be
rediscovered and carried forward in the 21st century. The Church of Gnostic Luminism will
promote this research, as well as studying and codifying traditional methods of managing
and working with this energy, as taught in the religious, mystical, and “occult”
traditions of the world.
Personal
Reality: Study of the nature of personal
reality will be an important part of the work of our Church. Among the essential Revealed
principles in this area will be the following:
Spiritual Indestructibility:
The life energy that makes up the
“true self” of each person (as distinguished from the “ego” or
exterior identifications) cannot die, always has existed and always will exist — in
conformation with the laws of conservation of matter and energy (neither matter nor energy
can be created or destroyed; they merely change form). “Death” is merely a
transition from one stage of existence, or form of manifestation, to another; there is no
“final end” of one’s most essential “self.” The only part of oneself that can be
touched by death is the “ego” (the illusory shell of exterior identifications).
If you think that is
“you” — if you choose to identify with the exterior form rather than the
interior reality — then, yes, “you” may indeed “die.”
Reincarnation: The life energy or “spirit”
that constitutes one’s conscious self returns to physical life as an infant after the
end of each lifetime, in obedience to an attractive force as real as the force of gravity.
This attractive force arises from karma,
or actions performed in life which cause reactions. Every action, every spoken word, and
even every thought in one’s mind will cause vibrations to pulse outward through the
“æther,” the subtle matter of which space is composed. These vibrations ripple outward
through time and space, and eventually rebound on the entity that originated them, shaping
the nature and quality of that one’s life experience in a present or future
incarnation. In the average person, this process
occurs unconsciously. The task of the Gnostic Luminist is to
gain conscious control over the process of karma, and harmonize the vibrations as they
rebound, canceling out each wave without creating any new ripples. When the soul is karmically harmonized
like the clear, calm surface of a windless lake, liberation can be obtained from the
compulsive attraction that mandates a return to material manifestation. Other options, it is said, then become
available.
Involution and Evolution:
The desire of spirit to merge with
matter and taste the dark magnetic bliss of Earth-life, a blind and inexorable hunger,
arises like wind-ripples on the lake, luring the life energy away from its focus in the
infinite / eternal realm of cosmic unity, and into discrete particularity within the
finite / temporal dimensions. This descent of Spirit into Matter
(involution), a “fall from grace,” continues until a state of maximum saturation
is achieved and the hunger of Spirit for material experience is satiated. At this point, a rebound begins; the
incarnate Spirit starts to remember its origins and begins working its way back toward
Unity; thus involution ends and evolution begins. The archetypal
story of the involution
and evolution of Spirit into / out of Matter is recounted in the Christian parable of the
Prodigal Son in the New Testament (Luke 15: 11 - 32).
Illumination and Liberation:
The culmination of spiritual evolution
is the expansion of consciousness in the individual until it reaches a point at which the
individual becomes fully aware of the true trans-spatiotemporal unity of all life, the
identity of the particular with the universal. This experience is called samadhi,
“cosmic consciousness,” or Illumination. It makes possible a release from the
necessity of continued physical incarnation; liberation (moksha) from the wheel of
lives and deaths (samsara). This liberation is the only true
“salvation.” Conscious unity with the Self of All
Life is the true “heaven.”
Telepathy:
Mind-to-mind communication that is not
dependent on the spoken or written word is a natural function of the human mind (and other
minds as well). In earlier epochs, before the way of
life we (falsely) call “civilization” began, telepathy was our normal, primary
means of communication. Spontaneous mutual awareness of
subjective mental experience was “normal” for the vast majority of the time
humans have existed on Earth, well over a million years; it has only been
“paranormal” for the last few thousand years. Common awareness of the subjective
quality of life experience was shared across species boundaries, between all forms of
life.
Ice Age Trauma: The advent of the Pleistocene ice age
brought this Edenic golden age to a close. The traumatic struggle for survival in
the wake of the great glaciers, as scarcity and difficulty replaced the abundance and ease
of the paleolithic period, caused a rapid change in the nature of human life on Earth.
The remnants of our ancient memory of
the pre-glacial period and its demise are preserved in the myths and folktales of many
lands. An example is the Biblical tale of the
Tower of Babel (in Genesis 11: 1 - 9), which symbolically depicts the loss of conscious
telepathy that accompanied our adoption of spoken language, linear-rational thought, and
the accoutrements of “civilization” — and the accompanying retreat from a
culture based on sharing and empathy, to one based on struggle and competition. (For more discussion of these matters,
see Post-Apocalyptic Paganism.)
Repression and Taboo:
Telepathy is still a fact of life for
humans, but it now occurs on a subconscious level. The fact is that — as Stephen
Gaskin has taught — we are really telepathic all the time, but we refuse to
admit it to ourselves and to each other. Our natural telepathy is inhibited by social
conditioning that denies and forbids it. The struggle against this
anti-telepathic conditioning is an essential part of the Luminist path, a prerequisite for
attainment of higher consciousness. And in the political realm, the
struggle to free human minds from anti-telepathic social conditioning is an essential part
of the Revolutionary Luminist strategy. It is a necessary precursor to the revolutionary
reorganization of human life on Earth and the emergence of true civilization. As it has been said: We have had the
First and Second World Wars; now we must have the First World Revolution.
|
BACK
