And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 5

Continued from Part 4.

In the last installment we saw that the difficulties in achieving gnosis stem from the fact that we are “broken machines” (Ouspensky) or horse-drawn carriages whose driver is asleep at the reins (Mouravieff). We are unable to Do. We only react mechanically. In addition, we are rarely truly conscious. We do, however, believe that we are conscious. Why is that the case? If we think we are conscious what is it that we are conscious of? If the ‘I’ can be different at each moment, if it can be a different bundle of ‘I’s, what gives us any continuity of self at all? That would be the ego (which is Latin for ‘I’) or what Mouravieff refers to as the ‘I’ of the Personality. Society requires that we have one of these; if we don’t we will most likely be locked up.

The ‘I’ of the Personality is composed of a considerable number of little ‘I’s forming different groups which take turns at ruling our attitudes and actions. How then can we reconcile this chaotic state with the continuity it provides, even if only apparently, to our mental life? Three elements are found to form the basis of this apparent continuity:
--our name;
--experience, as fixed by memory
--the faculty of lying to ourselves and to others.
(Mouravieff, Gnosis, Book 1, p. 28)

The first two are self-evident, but why is lying there? Mouravieff asks us to imagine what life would be like if we couldn’t lie.

Life would become impossible, due to the shocks and conflicts which we would have to face. In this way, lies serve as buffers, like the buffers of railway carriages which soften shocks. It is this faculty of lying which makes our lives less of a battle, and contributes greatly to the impression of coninuity life gives us. (Mouravieff, Gnosis, Book 1, p. 28)

Mouravieff also sees an ‘I’ of the body and, finally the real ‘I’.

The exterior man has three ‘I’s: the ‘I’ of the body (physical), the ‘I’ of the Personality (mental), and potentially the real ‘I’ (spiritual). Theoretically, the real ‘I’ should have assumed the responsibility for commanding the whole system. But since the fall of Adam, the real ‘I’, in its aspect as the inmost heart, has been relegated to the background of consciousness, dominated by the mental ‘I’ of the Personality. The latter, who commands by default, so to speak, lacks unity. Changing, floating,
multiple, he can only act in a disorderly manner. Thus the ‘I’ of the body, who should normally obey the mental ‘I’, frequently imposes his own purposes upon the latter. The usual example of such domination is that of adultery, due to sexual attraction without any spiritual ties. (Mouravieff, Gnosis, Book 1, p. 27)

Gnosis for Mouravieff is the knowledge and savoir-faire that develops from the “permanent link which must be introduced between the Personality and the Real ‘I’.” (Ibid., p. 41)

The great difficulty—which makes this read narrow and painful—consist in the fact that for the Personality this transmutation results in the loss of its dominating position: it must bow and submit. What makes the problem even more difficult is that the Personality must accept the new situation in advance; more, it must aspire to it; must wish for it ardently. As we have alredy said, the real ‘I’ remains in a passive state in the exterior man. For the Personality, the prospect of the emergence of that ‘I’ and its permanent presence in daily life entails the loss of free choice, and it reacts sharply. (Ibid., p. 41, emphasis mine)

Before looking more closely at these three ‘I’s we need to make another three-part distinction. According to Mouravieff,

Three main currents act in our mental life: intellectual, emotional and motor-instinctive…. These divisions correspond to our thoughts, our feelings, and to our senses and sensations. (Mouravieff, Gnosis, Book 1, p. 9)

Mouravieff refers to the three centers as the three lower centers (motor center, emotional center and intellectual center) because there are potentially two other, higher centers. It is in the higher centers that the Real ‘I’ is:

Beyond the three mental centers of the Personality—which from now on will be called lower centers—we have within us two other higher centers, independent of the physical body and of the Personality. In ensemble, these two higher centers truly represent our Soul, of which our current language speaks in the third person. Their presence in our innermost heart, and the rarity of the impartial and objective messages that we are able to receive through the medium of these centers, give us our impression of the real ‘I’ as a Judge residing in his courthouse.

… While the lower centers in the exterior man are not fully developed, the higher centers are perfect and work at full capacity. But as we are, we cannot receive more than a negligibly small part of their communications. The reason for this is that man views himself as nothing but Personality. This illusion has as its immediate effects, pride, egocentricity and egotism. These form a kind of screen, only allowing the most rudimentary messages from the higher centers to pass, although their communication continues non-stop. They knock at the door; but it is for us to hear the voice and open. (Mouravieff, Gnosis, Book 1, p. 45)

Mouravieff then divides people according to which center predominates. In “man” 1, the motor center predominates, in man 2, the emotional center and in man 3 the intellectual center. Next come man 4 and 5 in whom the higher centers predominate. (p. 26) Notice how that scheme maps well onto the apostle Paul and the Gnostics’ scheme of hylics, psychics, and pneumatics. In the following passage, Mouravieff makes that explicit:

[T]he Apostle [Paul] esablishes a fundamental distinction between positive philosophy on the one hand, based on the speculations of what he calls carnal intelligence; on a tradition which is purely human in origin, and on the other hand the higher knowledge whose unique sources, he says, is Christ. For St. Paul, carnal intelligence is none other than that of the Personality—dominated in cultured circles by an education which is predominantly intellectual. In spite of all its refinements in the art of reasoning, this intelligence cannot go beyond the limits of agnostic rationalism. Enclosed within this circle, human reason does not know and will never know what lies beyond these limits. (Ibid., p. 43)

In Gnosis, Mouravieff makes a startling assertion. There are, he writes, two “races” of humanity: the Adamic and Pre-Adamic:

In the first volume of ‘Gnosis’, we already referred several times to the coexistence of two essentially different races: one of Men, and another of Anthropoids. We must emphasize the fact that from the esoteric point of view the latter term has no derogatory meaning.

…The Scriptures contain more than one reference to the coexistence on our planet of these two humanities – which are now alike in form but unlike in essence. We can even say that the whole dramatic history of humanity, from the fall of Adam until today, not excluding the prospect of the new era, is overshadowed by the coexistence of these two human races whose separation will occur only at the Last Judgement. (Mouravieff, Gnosis, Book 3, p. 107)

…The human tares, the anthropoid race, are the descendants of pre-adamic humanity. The principal difference between contemporary pre-adamic man and adamic man – a difference which is not perceived by the senses – is that the former does not possess the developed higher centres that exist in the latter which, although they have been cut off from his waking consciousness since the Fall, offer him a real possibility of esoteric evolution. Apart from this, the two races are similar: they have the same lower centres, the same structure of the Personality and the same physical body, although more often than not this is stronger in the pre-adamic man than in the adamic; regarding beauty, we must not forget that pre-adamic man and woman were created by God on the sixth day, in His image and after His likeness, and that the daughters of this race were beautiful. (Ibid., pp. 108-109)

By identifying himself with the ‘I’ of his Personality, Adam lost consciousness of his real ‘I’ and fell from the Eden that was his original condition into the same condition as the pre-adamics… The two humanities, coming from two different creative processes, later mingled on the level of organic life on Earth… From then on, the
coexistence of these two human types, and the competition which was the result of this, became the norm…we can see that throughout the centuries, even in our own day, adamics in their post-fall condition, have been are are generally in an inferior position to the pre-adamics.

…For the moment we will restrict ourselves to repeating that contemporary adamic man, having lost contact with his higher centres and therefore with his real ‘I’, appears practically the same as his pre-adamic counterpart. However, unlike the latter, he still has his higher centres, which ensure that he has the possibility of following the way of esoteric evolution. At present, pre-adamic man is deprived of this possibility, but it will be given to him if adamic humanity develops as it should during the era of the Holy Spirit. (Ibid., p. 129)

Note that these two “races” should not be confused with our contemporary term “race” since the Adamic and Pre-Adamic races are by now evenly mixed and distributed throughout the world. Both types can be found even in individual families (See this article on "organic portals).

In fact, this distinction between Adamic and Pre-Adamic humanity maps well on the Gnostic versus Literalist dichotomy. Laura Knight-Jadczyk explains it this way:

It is more an issue of the difference between human beings who have "something" inside as opposed to those who don't have this "something." When this
"something" is analyzed, it reveals a fundamental difference in "being" that is most easily expressed as those who worship something outside themselves, vs those who don't worship any god or thing outside themselves because they cannot worship outside what is inside.

… very energetic negatively oriented beings have many advantages in this world over very energetic positive beings due to the fact that the former have no "moral imperative." For them, the material world is all there is: in their core being, they worship the material universe represented by a god who is "outside" of them, and inner reflection and analysis so as to determine if they are conducting themselves in such a way so as to return to the inner "Origin" - or Edenic state - has no real meaning for them.

Many religions have been created that promise salvation or heaven via an intermediary, and these concepts are appealing to the negative orientation, but the deep, internal conviction that this can and must be accomplished by cultivating that divine spark within does not exist for them. They may claim that it does, but their actions do not match their words. Their thinking is "legalistic," and the best way to describe is is that they "strain at gnats and swallow camels."

Some people, then, are at home here and others are not. The latter are “soujourners” – a word that has great resonance for those who feel that they have forgotten the most important thing: where they have come from and where they are going. There remains a spark of memory, however, for those who, like the Prodigal Son are wallowing in the pig sty of “a far country.” These myths have been present since the beginning in all traditions. For that reason, many refer to them as the “perennial philosophy.” What may be new about Mouravieff’s gloss on the Pauline tradition, is the explicit division of humanity into two groups, one of which does not have that memory of their origins somewhere else. Could this be what early sources thought was so “abominable about early Christianity? Perhaps. On the other hand, it would not be so unusual in the ancient world to propose a spiritual elite, or that humanity is not one.

Probably the earliest surviving gospel is one that didn’t make it into the canon: The Gospel of Thomas. This text was recovered in the 1940s after having been lost in an Egyptian cave for sixteen centuries. The text is a series of statements (logion in the singular) by Jesus assembled seemingly in no particular order. Here is Logion 13. Note how startling and shocking the secret teachings are said to be:

Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like."

Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger."

Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."

Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."

Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."

And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"

Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."

To be continued...