DeConick A.D

166
GNOSTIC ALTERED STATES
modern world, the Gnostics developed therapies to resolve anxiety and
stabilize the human condition, although their therapies functioned within
the context of religious practices rather than science and the counselor’s
office. The variety of Gnostic Christian myths and accounts of their activities
focus on the origin of the human psyche (soul), how it came to be
damaged, and how healing can take place within the context of religious
initiation.
As we saw in chapter 2, Gnostics trace humanity back to time primordial,
to a god, a hermaphrodite or androgynous being, who like a great
snake rests silent and inert in the elemental waters. This is before anything
existed. What happens to this solitary being? Different Gnostic texts suggest
different things, although there is not much a solitary being can do.
He can look at himself in the water. He can think about himself. He can
stand up. And he can masturbate. Different myths have him doing all of
these things.
The result is that, through these actions, he takes form and multiplies
or generates himself, birthing divinities like himself, creating a world of
divinities in the process, which eventually leads to the creation of our universe
and ourselves. The process is like a great chain of being falling down
from utter transcendence. Creation ultimately is transcendence manifesting
itself. And for these Gnostic religious thinkers, this meant that the
transcendent, the pneuma (spirit), had become immanent in us. It had
become part of who we are, mixed in denser forms of reality, enmeshed
in our psyches and our physical bodies.
So Gnostic spirituality is oriented toward a sacred that is transcendent,
that is permanent being, which overflowed and generated different realms
of existence, including our own. The one becomes the many. But here is
the catch: the Gnostics thought that this generation process was flawed in
some way; that which overflows is in some way not exactly the original. It
is a copy, a reproduction, an outpouring that eventually becomes corrupt
or diminished.
This unavoidable corruption is not traced back to sin or error but
to separation, when the whole God severs itself in the process of individuation.
This process of separation and individuation results in suffering,
anxiety, fear, terror, and remorse. This reminds me very much of the
basic premises of developmental psychology today. We have learned that
the child must separate from the mother, must differentiate, to become a