Christian Gnostics realize the world is an illusion where the secret Church fights the Creator God

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Trying to explain Gnosticism is like trying to explain Jazz. Teaching all the history, tradition, and mechanics of Jazz only brings about a surface understanding. But to truly appreciate this art form, a person must fully immerse himself in the music with both mind and heart. And then one not only understands Jazz but begins to experience Jazz.

Gnosticism is the Jazz of all religions. Both are individualistic yet communal with their surroundings, extroverted with their innermost passions, and seemingly wild yet contained in an almost surreal framework. Both are adaptive, prone to improvisation depending on the audience, and tend to borrow in order to improve their execution. Both have always thrived in the smoky, dark corners of society, as well as in places of artistic explosions.

And as soon as the mind thinks it has a finger on Gnosticism or Jazz, they slide right out of its touch and into another playful incarnation with serious undertones reflective of its shadowy origins.

In ‘The Gnostic Religion’, Hans Jonas wrote that understanding Gnosticism requires a sort of musical ear that should be continually trained.

That is not an easy feat in a world where mainstream faiths require individuals to play the role of a mechanical Saliery instead of an ethereal Mozart, as represented in the movie ‘Amadeus’. And it’s certainly harder to understand any esoteric religion in a short attention-span world always demanding easily-digestible lists.

But if a list is demanded on defining Gnosticism, it might as well come from a person whose first passion was music-- Philip K. Dick, considered by many as the latest and greatest Gnostic bandleader.

Dick’s visionary Gnosticism is best known from his novels (‘Valis’ and ‘The Divine Invasion’) and films (‘Bladerunner’ and ‘Minority Report’). Yet Dick spent much of life expressing his mystic discoveries in his ‘Exegesis’. Although the ‘Exegisis’ is a massive work, Dick managed to produce a list that might satisfy those needing to perfect their musical ear.

Here are ‘The Ten Major Principles of the Gnostic Revelation’, including the introduction and a curse at the end:

The Gnostic Christians of the second century believed that only a special revelation of knowledge rather than faith could save a person. The contents of this revelation could not be received empirically or derived a priori. They considered this special gnosis so valuable that it must be kept secret. Here are the ten major principles of the gnostic revelation:

1.  The creator of this world is demented.
2.  The world is not as it appears, in order to hide the evil in it, a delusive veil obscuring it and the deranged deity.
3.  There is another, better realm of God, and all our efforts are to be directed toward
      a. returning there
      b. bringing it here
4. Our actual lives stretch thousands of years back, and we can be made to remember our origin in the stars.
5. Each of us has a divine counterpart unfallen who can reach a hand down to us to awaken us. This other personality is the authentic waking self; the one we have now is asleep and minor. We are in fact asleep, and in the hands of a dangerous magician disguised as a good god, the deranged creator deity. The bleakness, the evil and pain in this world, the fact that it is a deterministic prison controlled by the demented creator causes us willingly to split with the reality principle early in life, and so to speak willingly fall asleep in delusion.
6. You can pass from the delusional prison world into the peaceful kingdom if the True Good God places you under His grace and allows you to see reality through His eyes.
7. Christ gave, rather than received, revelation; he taught his followers how to enter the kingdom while still alive, where other mystery religions only bring about amnesis: knowledge of it at the "other time" in "the other realm," not here. He causes it to come here, and is the living agency to the Sole Good God (i.e. the Logos).
8. Probably the real, secret Christian church still exists, long underground, with the living Corpus Christi as its head or ruler, the members absorbed into it. Through participation in it they probably have vast, seemingly magical powers.
9. The division into "two times" (good and evil) and "two realms" (good and evil) will abruptly end with victory for the good time here, as the presently invisible kingdom separates and becomes visible. We cannot know the date.
10. During this time period we are on the sifting bridge being judged according to which power we give allegiance to, the deranged creator demiurge of this world or the One Good God and his kingdom, whom we know through Christ.

To know these ten principles of Gnostic Christianity is to court disaster.

‘The Ten Major Principles of Gnostic Revelation’ is a superior catalog from an individual who possessed that finely-tuned musical ear for understanding Gnosticism. But all lists on this artistic faith are ultimately just musical notes flattened on a black and white canvass. The melody not only must be understood but it must be experienced to gain its full rewards.

And if a person can’t grasp Gnosticism after repeated sessions, then perhaps it’s better to defer to what Louis Armstrong once told a reporter:

"Man, if you have to ask what Jazz is, you'll never know."

However, there is a simpler list with one single line that the Orthodox and Fundamentalist can understand:

Gnosticism plays one Hell of a note, figuratively and literally.

And all that Jazz.

Related Articles to Help Understand Christian Gnosticism:

The true meaning and purpose of heresy

Gnostic Sermonette: The Gospel of Thomas #18

Gnostic Sermonette: The Theodotus Excerpt