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Aspects of Gnosis

by Nick Baker, 1999

For further discussion with Nick Baker: nick@baker4400.freeserve.co.uk

101. Gnosis and worship

The knowledge of God is more important than the worship of God, and in order to know God one must also know Evil. Worship is not worship unless it is backed up by knowledge. Knowledge, by its own gaining brings worship, but the primary aim is knowledge.

102. Spiritual dialogue

Spirituality must involve a dialogue between the individual and the Universe, without destroying the personality or the ego, as in the fashion of some Hindu or Buddhist theories, then there can be no dialogue. You cannot have a dialogue with a psychic corpse.

103. The meaning of Gnosis

The absolute or authentic truths of existence (Gnosis) are accessible to human beings and the gaining of this knowledge is the supreme achievement and meaning for existence. This meaning and purpose is not apprehended by faith or blind belief or, thus, by blind repression, nor by good works, but by interior insight and transformation. Nor can Gnosis be won by believing that the sacrificial act of one man in history could lift the burden of guilt from the believer. Any spirituality based on this is a false spirituality, no matter what signs and wonders that belief may bring forth.

104. The basis of Self awareness

The extraverted human ego must become aware of its alienation from the Self before any closer union of the personality with the Self can begin. This is the prerequisite of any true spiritual quest.

105. Perception of creation

The idea that the Gnostics rejected the Earth and the Creation is a falsehood. The Gnostics rejected the system ( Kosmos or Aeon ) in which the Demiurge of the mind projects the deception. They did not reject the Earth ( Ge ), which they regarded as neutral or even of outright good.

106. The Gnostic Journey

The signposts point to the forest

But there is no clear pathway.

Only the explored path to the forest edge.

In the forest, the Sun or North Star

Will not always shine.

In the forest, the journey does not end.

The traveller ever journeys but never arrives.

But the traveller must make the journey

Full of expectation

Even though the trees cannot be named.

For, in the naming of the trees

The way is lost.

There is no standard 'method' in Gnosis. The way to realization is as unique as the individual.

107. Aspects of Gnosis.

Human beings are creatures of three components:

a. Hyle: a biological material aspect, including the brain. People who consider themselves to be solely this aspect are known as hyletics.

b. Psyche: a mind-emotion complex.

c. Pneuma: Spirit. It is upon the awakening of this aspect that Gnosis depends.

The pneuma carries on an active dialogue with the personal element of our self-hood ( hyle-psyche ), through the use of symbols, mostly in dreams, visions and synchronistic events.

The symbols that proceed from the pneuma reveal a path of psycho-spiritual development that can be traced back to the past and forwards into the future. We are driven by our past and drawn towards our future, the soul's teleological destiny.

Prior to an arising of Gnosis, the hyle-psyche ( ego ) is subject to unconscious, blind powers and emotions ( demiurgoi or archons ). The ego is alienated from the pneuma but tries to imitate the pneuma by way of subconscious projections. In this way it assumes autonomy (there are no other gods but me. Or, there are no gods at all).

The ego creates its own Kosmos but it is a distorted one, with no reference to the pneuma, and is ruled over by the ego's own self, projected as god. It is referred to in Gnosis as the Evil Demiurge, identified as Jahwey, Jehovah, or Allah.

The alienation of the ego must be fully acknowledged and experienced before it can be overcome. The path to Gnosis and wholeness is a path of darkness. Those unaware of suffering do not seek a solution and the tension between light and dark, good and evil is a necessary tension towards wholeness.

The goal of spiritual growth is expressed as images of wholeness or Primal Man ( Self ). The Self is unique for every individual and is formed by the integration of the ego with the unconscious pneuma. The Self is neither created, nor is it a Darwinian feature. It is alchemically integrated from the opposites of light and dark, good and evil, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious. It grows within a biological matrix but is not really an evolved feature in the biological sense.

The goal of Gnosis is integrated wholeness, not moral perfection. In Gnosis the pneuma is superior to the law. Those of the Spirit ( ho pneumatos ) being superior to those of the Law ( ho psychos ). Goodness is no substitute for Wholeness. To restore the power of the Pleroma we must know evil rather than do evil. The unconsciousness of ourselves forces us to do evil until it is brought in to the consciousness of Gnosis. Each human being is his or her own law-giver as well as his or her own reward and punishment.

108. The Pleroma

The origin is the Pleroma. The Pleroma is, and yet it is not. It is empty and yet full. It is the empty fullness. Out of the Pleroma comes complete fullness and complete emptiness. The Pleroma has every name and yet has no name.

Humanity is also the Pleroma. For, although the psyche is closed to most of us, to open it awakens us to the true fullness of being. The Pleroma is the true fullness or totality of psychic reality.

109. The Principle of Individuation

The Principle of Individuation is the process whereby the conscious ego becomes aware of the reality of the psyche and becomes fully integrated with it. This integration involves the surrender and death of the ego prior to the resurrection of the new, fully integrated ego. The story of Jesus' death and resurrection is a symbol of this process.

110. Seek after your true nature

One should not strive after the differentiated state of personalism on the one hand or the obliteration of the personality in undifferentiated sameness on the other. The rugged and anxious individualist can end up in much the same trouble as the Yogi seeking the ego-less void. Do not strive after differentiation, but seek to know your true nature. In this way you do not need to know anything of the Pleroma but you arrive at your true goal because of your nature.

In order to reach the necessary transformative self knowledge, one needs to keep the thinking function subservient to the inspiration proceeding from the Self.

111. The Faustian Journey

Faust sets out to follow the prescribed paths but Mephistophelese encourages him to follow the uncharted way. It is only by way of his commitment to darkness, error, suffering, along with ecstasy, passion and battle that he attains to his ascent into the realms of light, guided by the transfigured Sophianic spirit of Margaret. Thus he can say that freedom and life belong to the man solely who must re-conquer them each day. Thus, Faust did not sell his soul to the Devil but sought his soul by taking the dark, uncertain path.

112. Tension of rejected opposites

Commitment to any one-sided view leads to a dangerous build-up of opposites in the unconscious. Fanaticism cannot take criticism. Fundamentalism holds emotional blackmail as its main weapon and the stone rejected by the builders becomes the cornerstone of the prison-house in which the builders find themselves. The sole pursuit of rational values leads to outbursts of irrational anger.

113. Many and One

God is many as well as one. Satan is not a minor god in opposition to God but an equal to Helios. Helios and Satan are the first emanations of creation. Helios is total fullness; Satan, total emptiness. One cannot be destroyed without destroying the other. Evil is the opposite of Good and not the absence of Good. It cannot be destroyed without destroying the good. It is the supreme task of men and women to understand and pay homage to the balance and interaction of these two, so that one does not become prominent over the other.

114. The inner and outer law.

Moral conflicts cannot be resolved by consciousness alone. In addition to consciousness and its commandments, the unconscious and its commandments must be taken into account. Responsibility is owed to the inner world as well as the outer. We owe worship to the light but the darkness needs our homage also. The religion of the masses demands obedience to god's will, while Gnosis demands obedience and disobedience. Not all commandments come from the true God - many come from the Demiurge, whose law may be useful to the psychics, or those of the soul but is counter-productive to the true Gnostic, the pneumatics, or those of the Spirit. The will of nature is not that of supernature. The law of the morning, the guide of the spiritual infant, cannot be the law of the evening, where the light of differentiation must be dimmed in order to admit the light of the midnight sun of individuation. What will it profit a man if he holds the law of the morning as the evening star rises?

115. The seamless whole.

God's brilliant light is also his burning fire. His love is also his wrath. The light and the darkness, the life and death, right and left are brothers one to another. Because of this, neither are the good good, nor the evil evil, nor is life a life, nor death a death. Because of this, each will be resolved into its origin from the beginning.

116. Abraxas.

The unifying deity between Helios and Satan is Abraxas - Taurus, who commands the pole star at the Spring of the year, when the divine energy rises at Eastertide. Abraxas is the commander of time, for the name in Greek numerology - Alpha-1, Beta-2, Rho-100, Alpha-1, Xi-60, Alpha-1, Sigma-200 totals 365. The commander of the whole year, the whole of time. Abraxas can unmask and mask time, and the role of the planets of popular astrology is over-ridden.

Origen wrote this prayer...

Hale to thee, solitary King. Bond of invisibility. First power, guarded by the spirit of Foreknowledge and by Wisdom. From this place I am sent on, pure, already part of the light of Son and Father. Let grace be with me, yes, Father, let it be with me.

117. Dualities

Dualities are not absent from the unconscious. Helios and the Devil are very much present in the totality of the psyche, including the unconscious. The difference lies in that, in the conscious, dualities are conflicting, while in the unconscious they are complimentary. In the unconscious, life is generated and regenerated by the power of Abraxas. No psychological conflict is ever resolved by one winning out over the other. Opposites must be reconciled on a plane that is superior to themselves.

Between day and night, light and dark, stands the rooster-headed Abraxas, the forgotten arbiter between Helios and Devil. Why do we say that life is good and death bad ?. We say that if we must choose one and not the other then we must choose that which we know. Death is the end of all that we know in our ego-thinking. From this rejection of death comes the rejection of ageing and of the old. If we reject old age in the abstract, we reject also the physical carriers of it.

It is in this that we have been one-sided in the teaching of our children. The youth culture has arisen from the rejection of age and death and in this we have betrayed our children, for in the sunny uplands of the youth culture, the dark shadows breed violence.

Death is a part of life and life is a part of death. Our one-sided attitude to death is the result of the foolish demiurge who, in Genesis 3:3 made it appear that death is the result of human sin. From this it is only a short step to thinking that old age is the result of sin also. And those who are seen as such are not to be regarded with any value.

118. True Freedom

External discipline is useful to those of little Self discipline. When Self-hood is only minimally present in the personality, significance can be derived from ones presence in a group. In the growth of the Self, identification with others becomes less complete as individuation proceeds. The point is reached when the battle between the growing Self in the Tree of Life, and the collective self-hood of the Burning Bush become most fateful. It was the sign of a Burning Bush that directed Moses to return to help the Children of Israel.

It is not for Society to guide and save the Creative Hero. It is the reverse of this. Every one of us carries the Cross of the Redeemer, not in the bright moments of his or her tribe's great victory but in the silence of own personal despair.

The surrender of the limited purpose of the ego to the larger goal of the Self are not a loss of the sense of freedom. Only by subordinating the limitation of the ego to the Self do we truly justify our freedom - to make responsible and decisive actions. At some point in life we must all say yes to something greater than family, husband, wife, child, society, career, country. Jesus the Nazarene said, 'he who does not hate father or mother is not worthy to be the disciple of the true Self'. But when the true Self is known, then one can lead Captivity captive.

Freedom cannot be got by stripping away Orthodoxy, with its personal god and revealed law. One is left with the prison of an existential, egoic selfhood. The light within is still present, just enough to make us uncomfortable. We cannot escape being destined. Our freedom is not one that takes us away from the destiny of individuation but, rather, it is a freedom that permits us to recognise this destiny consciously, with full gnosis.

The light within is ever present. It is the Tav or Shekinah, the divine presence in the world. It is the ghost in the hills or the voice in the forest breeze. It is the Signatura Resum, the signature of the eternal within matter. As life become translucent in response to the Gnosis of consciousness, the hidden imprint, like a mysterious watermark in some yellowed parchment text of hidden wisdom, appears visibly before the eyes of the astounded observer.

119. Two worlds

We have become increasingly dependent on the objects of nature rather than on the archaic forces of nature and the deep power of the unconscious. The conscious has forgotten its origins in the unconscious. Urizen has forgotten he has a mother. Yet, the ego is of vital importance to us. It is not alone. There is a mysterious 'other'. Authentic morality, meaning, and truly ethical actions are only possible in the twilight zone between the two worlds of the conscious and unconscious.

The Tarot trump of The Lovers shows our dual need. Behind the man is the Burning Bush. Behind the woman is the Tree of Life. Life and love appear set apart in divinity, to be united only in humanity. The power of Left and Right, Love and Life both belong to wholeness. The flame of Eros and the fruit of the Tree of Life are both given to humanity alone with the gift of life. Male and female humanity are not just evolved extensions of biological gender. They are an emanation of the gods, longing for union but experiencing only discord. This is the driving force behind evolution. This is the sole reason for the coming of Humanity into the Cosmos, namely the union of the gods. This reconciliation and union comes only as a gift of consciousness as the total Self, which is the fulfilment of life, the crown of existence.

The collective unconscious, or objective psyche, gives a feeling of archaic, non-egoic identity, which connects with other humans, on an impersonal level, as well as the forces of environment and nature. Within the collective unconscious is a vast array of beings, each bringing messages from the Pleroma. But it is useless to think of the gods or worship them, or worship the first God, the effective fullness. We cannot take from it because emptiness swallows everything. To worship them is death, to fear them is wisdom. Not to resist them is liberation. But again, do not worship the archetypes, for they will possess you.

Archetypes exist both in the light and in the shadows. In the light there are gods and goddesses. In the shadows there are demons, fed by the shadows of our personalities. The Gnostics were creators of myth and fashioners of gods and goddesses on almost a daily basis. These were expressions of spiritual realities which sprang up from the Self. Gnosis is a realization of the Self within the unconscious and so the Gnostic life is a symbolic life of god and demons. Rigid monotheistic thinking never lends itself to the Gnostic effort and never contributes to the meaning of existence.

120. Many and One

Everywhere in Gnosis, there appears the many to supplement the one, even if not replacing it totally. Truth does not come into the world naked, but she has to be clothed in types and images, myth and symbol. In this way the light of the Pleroma is brought to earth for the enlightenment of the human soul. These symbols are not artificially created for the purpose of dogmatic preachment, but they contain something of the mystery of their own structure.

There is the Cross, which has exactly the same function as the atman or Self. The Christ figure and the Cross are then natural senses and products of the unconscious. They are natural symbols and differ fundamentally from the Christ of dogma in whom all darkness is lacking.

121. Depth and Silence

Creation proceeds by the differentiation of the Pleroma into paired opposites. In Valentinian Gnosticism the primordial opposites are called Depth (masculine) and Silence (feminine). In the Tao they are respectively Yang and Yin - approximately heavenly and earthly. Thus, the existence of all things is through the attraction of their opposite poles. They work in two ways. They either merge to produce something new, or they create because of the force-field between them, and the new entity is created in the force-field.

In the Book of Genesis we see the creation of these opposites in male and female and the creative tension between them. The psychic femininity of Eve brings the awakening of spiritual selfhood in Adam, her own masculine polar component (animus). From there on the world was perceived as spirit and matter, good and bad.

122. Orthodoxy and Rationalism

Monotheistic orthodoxy and atheistic rationalism are brothers under the skin. The all-spiritual God and the all-logical deity of reason are both blind, like Saclas, the blind and foolish demiurge of the Gnostics, neither can behold the desperate need to accept his polar opposites and to relate to it in creative conflict. Both have fostered a dreary and burdensome condition of mind which is characterised by Judeo-Christian guilt augmented by Freudian neurotic hopelessness.

123. The false path of Yoga

Most of the schools of Yoga are intent upon the overcoming of opposites by way of various meditative yoga exercises, which are said to elevate the mind to a condition which is conceived as non-dual and utterly beyond the categories of opposites. These teachings are counter-productive rather than helpful in the quest after spiritual creativity and its concomitant, the interaction of the opposites in the process of alchemical transformation. Homage must be paid to the opposites. One must never try to hide in the yogic abyss.

Not for the Gnostic is the ethereal trances of the Yogis, nor the rapturous immersion of consciousness in the abyss of the one without a second. Ours must be the Great Work of the Alchemist, the Hermetic Art of Thoth, of Hermes the Thrice Great. This is the true work of Gnosis, towards the birth of the Self in the Alchemical Marriage.

124. The Sexual Identity

It has often been stated that men have a feminine unconscious (anima) and that women have a masculine unconscious (animus), but this picture is not complete. The interplay of deities in sexuality, in its totality, involves a feminine Logos - Mater Coelestis - Sophia, and a masculine Eros - Phallos. Logos governs the spiritual in man and the sexual in woman, while Eros governs the spiritual in woman and the sexual in man.

For men, this means that they identify with law, order, extraverted conscious self-hood, analysis - in short, the manifestations of the Logos. Consequently, the elements of Eros - fertility, sexuality, romance, mystery - all recede into the unconscious. These aspects can then only be perceived by projection and are then projected on to those whose sexuality is governed by the Logos - women. The attraction and fear of this area in men then often becomes the victimization of women in their relationships with men.

For women, spirituality is governed by Eros. Thus it is more earthward than that of men and so women are able to undertake many tasks without the need to adduce conscious meaning, in the way that men often require. There is, thus, a strong intuitive element in women. Also, the sexuality of women, governed by Logos, is able to discover meaning in the sexual sphere more readily than men. At the same time, there is a greater tendency for women to realise the spirituality in the material world. The Logos goddess is more closely associated with creation. The Logos in woman is quite powerful in her at an unconscious level, which confers psychic benefits on her which tend to make her the more insightful, intuitive and spiritually aware of the two sexes.

From the point of view of this spiritual foundation, the road to a 'unisex' society is a futile one. Unisex simply tries to merge the two sexes without regard to this underpinning and unisex will only result in tension. Uncertainty of ones sexuality is often the result of uncertainty or lack of knowledge of the spiritual foundation and to manipulate ones gender without regard to the interplay of Logos or Eros can have disastrous results.

125. Androgynization

Gnosis is not concerned with unisex. It is concerned with androgyny. Androgyny is the achievement of Selfhood with regard to the constellation of Logos and Eros given above. This is hieros gamos or the mystic marriage. Eros and Logos are thus married in the individual Self and the differences of men and women are complemented in androgyny.

This union can also be identified between heaven and earth. The semen of the earthly phallos, the sap of the etz chiim (Tree of Life) projected into the womb of the sky mother causes the fertilization of the psychological cosmic egg, out of which the new cosmos of consciousness comes forth. This union of heaven and earth brings forth the androgynous Anthropos, the New Man, the Christ, who is the paradigm of the individuated ego of every individual.

126. Community and Individual

Gnostics are often accused of being against community. Gnosis is against unconscious community. Christian Orthodoxy insists on the collectiveness of the Church, there being no salvation outside of the Church. Now the political party or the social movement is seen as valuable, while the individual is given little worth. Community is valuable as an instrument of Self-knowledge and a balancing against excessive individualism.

127. The power of the inner way.

When humans are lacking in psychological insight, they are tyrannised by the impulses of the unconscious and this ignorance brings upon them failures of diverse kinds - emotional, physical and moral. Some have even died from the effect of their dreams. When a degree of Self-knowledge is achieved the quality of life of the individual is greatly improved and the dreams are no longer enemies. For, as Jesus said, 'when you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you'.

128. Inner knowledge

It does not matter what the world thinks about this kind of experience. The one who has it possesses a great treasure, a thing that has become, for him or her, a source of life, meaning and beauty. That one will have pistis - (trust, experiential faith) and peace.

29. Conflict and meaning

But no matter how greatly ones life has been enriched by one or several encounters with the unconscious, the psychic fact still remains that only conflict leads to meaning and only more conflict brings greater meaning. The experience of meaning, which is what Gnosis is all about, is not equivalent to lack of suffering. Yet, the Pistis of the Self-aware conscious can fortify us against the perils of the opposites - against the fang of the serpent and the beak and claw of the dove. The danger of the irrational and the rational, of instinctuality and spirituality, are thus offset against the resilience of the Gnostic Soul, which, overcoming all these dangers, continues to experience newly discovered summits of insight and transformation and undergoes the reconciliation of new sets of opposites once more.

130. The Anthropos

The Serpent is symbolic of both light and dark. It is, both, wild beast and instructor and part of this lore involves the myth of the Anthropos - divine man in nature. The Anthropos was originally androgynous and eventually divided into two parts: the feminine, which resides in the sky, and the masculine, which came to reside in the earth. But both principles are themselves androgynous. The phallic serpent of the earth is feminine in an internal sense, while the celestial dove-woman conceals a masculine core. Thus, there are two Anthropoi, skyward and earthward, and St. Paul sees both as primal man - 'The first man is of the earth, earthly, and the second man is heavenly and from heaven. I Cor. 15:47.

The serpent is feminine and is the messenger of the masculine God Phallos. The dove is masculine and is the messenger of the feminine Goddess Mater Coelestis.

To be at one with nature is to be at one with the Anthropos. One can be part of plants, animals, clouds, rocks, night and day and the eternal in man. There is a kinship of all creation. The regard for nature, as well as true sexuality and the creative imagination has been suppressed by that great paganism, orthodox Christianity. The Gnostic loves nature not because of its external appearance, or its creator, but because of an overwhelming mysterious, unknowable, yet ever present Divinity. God resides in it as the Anthropos, the primordial god-man, inhabiting the earth. There is a hidden spirit in the world, in nature, in rocks, caves and waters. It rises, serpent-like, in the cells of plants and en-souls the moving creature.

It is this Anthropos that promotes askesis (transformative skill). By eluding our grasp and by stimulating our pursuit, the Serpent shows us hidden ways which, by our limited wit, we would never discover. In Faust, Mephistopheles, the wise devil of psychic energy, tempts the hero towards avenues of individuational activity. Though the venom of the Serpent may hurt, it is our mighty aid to the process of Gnosis.

131. In the earth and of the earth

The Gnostics warned people, particularly women, that they should not mistake the biological event of birth for the greater psychological reality that lies within its symbolism. In Luke 11:27-28 and 23-29, Jesus appears opposed to the unconscious attitude of women towards themselves as mere givers of birth to physical children. In the Gospel of Thomas, this theme is given even greater emphasis...

'Blessed are those who have heard the word of the Father and have kept it in truth. For there will be days when you will say: Blessed is the womb that has not conceived and the breasts that have not suckled'.

Nature, the Anthropos as the serpent of earth, injects into us the venom that can either paralyse or awaken. Following the serpent blindly can only lead into deeper unconsciousness. This is the sweet lure of the flesh is the archetype expressed unconsciously within a material context. Physical acts that consist of the unconscious expression of archetypal realities are like abortions which have no spiritual promise. On the other hand one can give birth to a son of the spirit, which is the new Self, usually born in the second half of life. He who discovers the meaning of the words of the Logos will not taste death.

From these considerations, the reductionist mind has come to the conclusion that the physical expression of interior, transformative force is, in itself, evil, and that the flesh must be mortified in order to release the spirit from its fleshly prison. But the expression of interior reality is useless without the presence of consciousness. Life requires the body as well as the spirit. The dead, who are earthbound are the prisoners of the serpent, in lives of blind instinctuality.

True askesis consists in the ability to combine the experiences of natural human living with a constant discovery of meaning. When this becomes possible, then the physical acts prompted by instinctuality no longer stand opposed to the realities that seek expression through them. It is at this time that life becomes a ritualised expression of the consciously performed drama of individuation. Asceticism as a denial of the instinctual nature is a perversion.

132. Synchronicity

Synchronicity (the term coined by Jung) is a relative simultaneity, to be understood as the subjective experience of an inner image (dream image) coinciding with an outer event. Only in this experience is the time difference abolished, since the event, whether in the past or future, is immediately present. It may happen that an inner image and outer event are connected together by an objective clock-time simultaneity, for which reason Carl Jung chose the term synchronistic rather than synchronous, and spoke of synchronicity rather than synchronism.

133. Ego-Psychic opposites

The poverty-stricken concept of the one personal god of Judeo-Christian-Islam has led many creative minds from the concept of god and religion altogether. Those of conscious atheism hold to a strong unconscious concern for spiritual matters. A conscious agnostic attitude evokes responses of a truly gnostic character from the unconscious. Heresy hunters often harbour great doubts against their accepted creeds.

134. Belief and experience.

Humans have a need not for religious belief but rather for religious experience. Religious experience is a psychic event which tend towards the integration of the soul. This integration is true Gnosis, but is never got through belief in ideas but only by realization in the form of experience. Only what is experienced of the divine is alive. What is simply believed is dead.

135. Active imagination.

The individual who takes part in active imagination takes part in the life of the images of the unconscious, but at the same time must assume conscious control. The images produced are not true in the rational sense but are symbolic expressions of the underlying movement of the psyche. The God-image is a psychic fact but not merely a psychic fact. It is not a product of the psyche but states that the psyche is open to the influences of the differentiating process of the Pleroma. But the images so produced must not be worshipped lest they take control of the ego.

136. Limitations of the lone ego.

No human ego is strong enough, wise enough and good enough to live life by its own light alone. The reality of God, not as an idea or belief but, as an experience, represents the most potent solution to the predicament brought about by the insufficiency of the human ego. This God archetype can only be experienced when the ego is prepared to let go of what it decides is self-consciousness. Ego-conscious creativity is not creativity at all and its arrogance rejects reliance on God.

137. The Relativity of God

The surrendered ego depends on God (the ultimate Self-hood) for creativity but the God-image also depends on the ego for fulfilment. God depends on man and man depends on God. The process of individuation is a joint process between the ego and the psyche, between man and God.

This process of relativity does not depend on theology but on everyday experience and authentic prayer. Authentic prayer does not ask God for favours. This prayer is the last barrier between the ego's separate existence and the allness of the Godhead. It is the joyous realization that the soul has come home. Man is weak to the extent that he looks outside of himself for help. It is only as he increasingly throws himself on the God within himself that he learns his own power and finds real freedom. What one does not use, one will lose. This is the true meaning of the parable of the talents. Neither the hyletic or the psychic are investing in any talent. The hyletic is depending solely in his or her ego. The devout psychic is praying to an outside power for help. Both are atrophying their creative psychic energy. It is for the pneumatic to cultivate the relationship between the ego and the objective psyche, thus bringing the true Gnosis Kardias - science of the soul. The ego that longs for the divine prays the authentic prayer.

138. The dark way

The Pollyanna optimism of the spiritual adolescent dictates just one direction - one way - upward. Such circumstances do not allow for spiritual growth. The spirit grows when the sunlit way is tempered by darkness, sorrow and suffering. In this twenty first century, we have set up, and continue to plan for, all the conditions to make sure that we extend our spiritual desert. But the forest may be dark and one may have to travel by night on an unmarked way.

For further discussion with Nick Baker: nick@baker4400.freeserve.co.uk