gnostic handbook

The Gnostic Handbook Page 45
tive. Pain and Suffering may seem nearly intolerable from the perspective of those locked
within it and for those experiencing the harder end of life. However, if we accept that as individuals
we have many lives and that incarnation is for the purpose of development, then we
may after some consideration comprehend the reality that pain and suffering is part of a learning
process. However, since our minds are limited by material experience we do not perceive
the full picture and hence treat our material reality as the final arbiter of experience. Pain and
suffering are real, but only relatively so. Things will seem different if looked at from the wider
perspective of multiple lives and worlds.
While we may have disposed of cosmological evil, the question still arises as to how does Evil
appear in the world While we may accept that pain and suffering, disease, death etc are not
“evil” except from our own perceptions, how do we explain murder, rape, war and the more destructive
of man’s behaviour
The last phase is probably the most important, Man’s behavior. So much that we would like to
blame on the Demiurge, God, Spirits or anything else is actually the fault of mankind itself. As
Robert DeGrimston discusses in his superb essay “Humanity is the Devil”, the cosmological
devil or Saturn is not “evil” but simply a tester, it is mankind who has become evil, through its
ignorance. Ignorance is the problem, for in ignoring our true natures we become enmeshed in
matter (which is of itself spiritual neutral) and following our desires become more and more ignorant.
While matter is neutral, our lust and desires lead to behaviors that can be best described
as evil. These occur because we are seeking in matter something it cannot give, matter is there
to give us an experience which leads us back to spirit. If we attempt to gain wisdom from matter
then we will become more and more frustrated, like a rabid consumer, we seek more and
more goods and yet nothing satisfies the craving. Dualism then is between Spirit and Ignorance,
the Upper Worlds and our attachment to matter, not between spirit and matter themselves, since
ultimately, they are part of each other.
The Watchers of Enoch
They thought of themselves, that they were beings existing by themselves and
without a source, since they do not see anything else existing before them.
Therefore they live in disobedience and acts of rebellion, without having
humbled themselves before the one because of whom they came into being.
They wanted to command one another, outrivaling one another in their vain
ambition…They were brought to a lust for power over one another according to
the glory of the name of which each is a shadow, each one imagining that it is
superior to the others.
Nag Hammadi Tri.Trac 79:12-32