Preparing for the Miraculous

10 eleven talksGnosticismGnosticism, again centred around the eastern Mediterranean, was a spiritual movement of many shades that,like Hermetism, became widespread in the first centuriesof the common era. (Christianity first took shape as a gnosticsect.) Yet the thinking assimilated by Gnosticism can betraced back through most of the previous history. Direct influencesare discernible of Pythagoranism, Platonism, theascetic schools referring back to Socrates, and Neoplatonism.Gnosticism also enriched itself with Hermetism, andit has inherited undeniable elements of oriental thought,especially Indian. It should once more be remembered thatthere were frequent exchanges between the cultures andreli gions of those times. Persons on a quest of spiritual truthwere in most cases also adventurous travellers. And missionaries,e.g. those sent by Emperor Ashoka, were a wellknownphenomenon. (There was a Judeo-Buddhist groupof Therapeutae in the neighbourhood of Alexandria.)How close Christianity has been to Gnosticism is shownby the furore with which all remainders of the latter, andthere were many, were branded as heretic and inexorablydestroyed by the early Christian Church. What remainedknown of Gnosticism were the quotations of it found inChristian polemical texts – till 1945, that is, when by anincredible coincidence a treasure trove of gnostic texts wasfound in Egypt, at Nag Hammadi. The texts not burned inthe cooking fire of the mother of one of the finders havebeen deciphered and translated. There were fragments andsome complete books of all the sources mentioned in theprevious paragraph, and there were also several unknowngospels, the ones that had found no place besides the acceptedfour in the New Testament.Essential ideas of the Upanishads can be found alsohere; in fact, they form the foundation on which Gnosticism