Thank you for this. It is interesting that our spiritual deep connectivity to the earth and nature is being deliberately oblitterated and removed from more and more people's lives. Replaced with a plastic world of consumerism to counter that deep empty sense of loss that many don't even realise they have.
Many people's perceptions of nature are either as yet another commodity to exploit. Something to be controlled and compete against. Or as something that must be managed in order to save it. But both of these render our understanding of nature as something separate from us.
If we see Gaia as a living breathing self regulating entity. A mother to us all. A place of reconnect. Our focus shifts from that of out side. Bu until we recognise we too are within our great mother. Instead of seeing our human experience as something that is being lived from the outside. We will keep losing our roots and this makes us more maluable to allow ourselves to be sleepwalked into a state of artificial intelligence and transhumanism.
Our experiences and relationships with our world are as rooted as the trees. It is not just what is seen above with the naked eye. The millions and millions of intertwining species within the vast networks of symbiotic relationships. A world of unseen mutual cooperation that exists and connects within our world. As above so below. We are all one.
THIS: “One might even think that the narrow specialization has been brought in specifically to prevent any broader and deeper understanding.”
...is part and parcel of THIS: “The old – and now forbidden – spirituality of our ancestors was about their withness to community, to nature, to the universe.”
Thanks for this essay, Paul. I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you get the chance check out The Nag Hammadi Library, The Definitive Translation of the Gnostic Scriptures edited by James Robinson. Also, there's a fantastic book called The Gnostics by Jacques Lacarriere, put out by City Lights that I can't recommend highly enough.
Fascinating and full of truth. Mirrors much of which I’ve read concerning the writings of Ibn Arabi - wondering whether you’ve read the bezels of wisdom ?
Nature IS life and all living creatures are part of nature. In order to understand life, we must first understand that the difference between a living body and a dead body is the presence of the spirit soul and that all living creatures are interconnected through this common thread.
Unfortunately, we have been slowly but methodically plucked from our connection to mother earth and transplanted into a soulless, digital, atheistic, alien environment of scientific bean counting, smart technology and AI….and when we lost our connection to mother earth and nature, we lost most of the power to resist the energy sucking parasites that feed on our essence.
I like some of the analysis here but as per James Lindsay (who whatever you think of his politics has done a very thorough text based analysis of the thinking of both Hegel and Marx as, rather than philosophers, essentially mystics who reheated and secularised Gnosticism for the modern age) I question the basic Gnostic premise that the world is just a cage created by an evil demiurge with the real God higher up, with the follow-on that there is an expert or priestly caste who can lead us out to a salvation if we just do as they say. Personally, I have no more desire to re-merge with the godhead as a tiny shard of it than I do to submerge my individuality as a work unit in the Marxist proletariat. My hope is that an anarchist perspective can dodge the persuasiveness of priests claiming secret knowledge and dissolve the bars of the secular cage (in this good and beautiful world that is all around us) conjured by the lords of debt finance gloating over their piles of gold. There is a cage but we can all dissolve the illusion rather than escape it. Dunno, perhaps that's a too fine distinction.
I could perhaps have spelled it out more clearly in the article, but the whole point of Lash's book is that gnosticism is NOT what we are usually told it is and what you describe. For him, it represents an embrace rather than a denial of our physical belonging to nature.
The merging of the soul you describe is common to many Indian impersonalist doctrines, which claim that the goal, moksha, is to become one, however, there are other doctrines that claim we are eternal individual spirit souls with eternal individual relationships with God. From my observations, I see this individuality all around me....even an ant has an individual personality and unique outlook on the world....so ultimately I believe all living beings are inter connected in essence but ultimately separate entities, spiritual in nature.
Yes, separate spiritual entities and I worry Gnosticism/gnosticism while interesting in many ways doesn't allow for this; "becoming one" seeming to be the only aim (I'm a bit more Taoistic) and that's too close to Hegelian/Marxist dissolution for me but I accept there are different takes on this and 'society v individual' is a metaphysical rabbit hole I'll avoid here. I hope to read more of Paul's thinking on this.
Perhaps we could be one in essence with the divine but simultaneously unique individual spiritual entities....identical in quality but not in quantity. We can observe this individual/collective dynamic in the material world, so perhaps it is our eternal reality......"As above, so below."
"When Sarah finally reaches the castle at the center of the labyrinth, Jareth makes his final plea to her: “Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.” It is the song of every seductive captor, every addiction, every fearful lover, every shadowed history. Sarah finally knows that it is she who will be the slave, and his power only exists if she believes in it. The power has been hers all along. She understands this as my mother did when she left her fiancé. As I did when I finally gave up heroin.
“You have no power over me,” Sarah says, and the labyrinth breaks into pieces."
From Abandon Me, a memoir by Melissa Febos (describing the film Labyrinth)
Thank you for this. It is interesting that our spiritual deep connectivity to the earth and nature is being deliberately oblitterated and removed from more and more people's lives. Replaced with a plastic world of consumerism to counter that deep empty sense of loss that many don't even realise they have.
Many people's perceptions of nature are either as yet another commodity to exploit. Something to be controlled and compete against. Or as something that must be managed in order to save it. But both of these render our understanding of nature as something separate from us.
If we see Gaia as a living breathing self regulating entity. A mother to us all. A place of reconnect. Our focus shifts from that of out side. Bu until we recognise we too are within our great mother. Instead of seeing our human experience as something that is being lived from the outside. We will keep losing our roots and this makes us more maluable to allow ourselves to be sleepwalked into a state of artificial intelligence and transhumanism.
Our experiences and relationships with our world are as rooted as the trees. It is not just what is seen above with the naked eye. The millions and millions of intertwining species within the vast networks of symbiotic relationships. A world of unseen mutual cooperation that exists and connects within our world. As above so below. We are all one.
THIS: “One might even think that the narrow specialization has been brought in specifically to prevent any broader and deeper understanding.”
...is part and parcel of THIS: “The old – and now forbidden – spirituality of our ancestors was about their withness to community, to nature, to the universe.”
Thanks for this essay, Paul. I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you get the chance check out The Nag Hammadi Library, The Definitive Translation of the Gnostic Scriptures edited by James Robinson. Also, there's a fantastic book called The Gnostics by Jacques Lacarriere, put out by City Lights that I can't recommend highly enough.
Ok, thanks Jesse.
Do you know Gigi Young's work on Isis Rising Paul? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0ThOShEzg&t=4s&pp=ygUSZ2lnaSB5b3VuZyB3YWtlIHVw0gcJCdgJAYcqIYzv
No, I don't. Thanks Helen.
She's very interesting, to put it mildly.
Fascinating and full of truth. Mirrors much of which I’ve read concerning the writings of Ibn Arabi - wondering whether you’ve read the bezels of wisdom ?
Not sure! I did read quite a lot around Ibn Arabi a few years back...
I’m wondering whether you wrote any pieces on his mysticism?
Excellent summary! Thank you. Paul. Another piece I will gladly return to and share. 🙏
Nature IS life and all living creatures are part of nature. In order to understand life, we must first understand that the difference between a living body and a dead body is the presence of the spirit soul and that all living creatures are interconnected through this common thread.
Unfortunately, we have been slowly but methodically plucked from our connection to mother earth and transplanted into a soulless, digital, atheistic, alien environment of scientific bean counting, smart technology and AI….and when we lost our connection to mother earth and nature, we lost most of the power to resist the energy sucking parasites that feed on our essence.
Thank you for this post Paul.
Interesting reading thank you and excellent graphics.
I'm wondering about the significance of the statue in the third picture.
This might help ... https://www.learnreligions.com/who-was-the-egyptian-goddess-isis-2561966
It did thanks.
This was a bit of a nice surprise. Thank you for the diversification , PC. And the Mother Earth image is exquisite. x
I like some of the analysis here but as per James Lindsay (who whatever you think of his politics has done a very thorough text based analysis of the thinking of both Hegel and Marx as, rather than philosophers, essentially mystics who reheated and secularised Gnosticism for the modern age) I question the basic Gnostic premise that the world is just a cage created by an evil demiurge with the real God higher up, with the follow-on that there is an expert or priestly caste who can lead us out to a salvation if we just do as they say. Personally, I have no more desire to re-merge with the godhead as a tiny shard of it than I do to submerge my individuality as a work unit in the Marxist proletariat. My hope is that an anarchist perspective can dodge the persuasiveness of priests claiming secret knowledge and dissolve the bars of the secular cage (in this good and beautiful world that is all around us) conjured by the lords of debt finance gloating over their piles of gold. There is a cage but we can all dissolve the illusion rather than escape it. Dunno, perhaps that's a too fine distinction.
I could perhaps have spelled it out more clearly in the article, but the whole point of Lash's book is that gnosticism is NOT what we are usually told it is and what you describe. For him, it represents an embrace rather than a denial of our physical belonging to nature.
The merging of the soul you describe is common to many Indian impersonalist doctrines, which claim that the goal, moksha, is to become one, however, there are other doctrines that claim we are eternal individual spirit souls with eternal individual relationships with God. From my observations, I see this individuality all around me....even an ant has an individual personality and unique outlook on the world....so ultimately I believe all living beings are inter connected in essence but ultimately separate entities, spiritual in nature.
Yes, separate spiritual entities and I worry Gnosticism/gnosticism while interesting in many ways doesn't allow for this; "becoming one" seeming to be the only aim (I'm a bit more Taoistic) and that's too close to Hegelian/Marxist dissolution for me but I accept there are different takes on this and 'society v individual' is a metaphysical rabbit hole I'll avoid here. I hope to read more of Paul's thinking on this.
Perhaps we could be one in essence with the divine but simultaneously unique individual spiritual entities....identical in quality but not in quantity. We can observe this individual/collective dynamic in the material world, so perhaps it is our eternal reality......"As above, so below."
Just sharing a nice quote that came to mind:
"When Sarah finally reaches the castle at the center of the labyrinth, Jareth makes his final plea to her: “Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.” It is the song of every seductive captor, every addiction, every fearful lover, every shadowed history. Sarah finally knows that it is she who will be the slave, and his power only exists if she believes in it. The power has been hers all along. She understands this as my mother did when she left her fiancé. As I did when I finally gave up heroin.
“You have no power over me,” Sarah says, and the labyrinth breaks into pieces."
From Abandon Me, a memoir by Melissa Febos (describing the film Labyrinth)
https://open.substack.com/pub/lisariesner/p/god?r=4ei3qu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true