Basic Experiential Knowledge

Preliminaries to a discussion of Gnosis

As a preliminary to exploring the details of a Gnostic Path, as a sort of basic background, I want to stress some underlying experiential knowledge that many people should be able to relate to and work with to some degree.

It seems to me that a discussion of ancient Gnostics, or of a Gnostic Path, can easily get distracted, or out of focus, and confused. It seems to be a bit unavoidable if we do not have some basic principles in mind that we can return to. So I will work up to an introduction of Gnostic thought, with some relevant basic experiential knowledge.

I think this makes sense, for the sake of having a useful sort of basis, an orientation, a focus. That way we have something we can return to if communication or insight seems to be in danger of becoming muddled. If things seem to be getting too complicated or abstract, we can re-orient ourselves towards the sort of basic experiences that serve as immediate knowledge from our personal life.

Basic Experiences

There are basic, primary experiences that we can relate to and explore, that can serve as a starting point. Before anyone picks up a book on anything related to Gnosis, one has observed or personally experienced many unfortunate aspects of life in this world, and hopefully, one has also observed or experienced something that would serve as evidence of some sort of compassion, wisdom, understanding, healing, insight, goodness, or conscience.

Horror and Conscience

Horror and conscience are rather basic experiences, for most people. It is not hard to observe some horror around us, and many of our lives contain some degree of personal horror, of some kind. Even those who do not seem to have a conscience, or people who deny the existence of a conscience, are bound to have met people who claim to have one.

There are instances where people act according to principles that rise above instincts of survival or self-benefit, principles that involve courage in the face of sadists, principles that involve compassionate understanding in the face of someone else's personal suffering. Such instances involve basic experience of horror and conscience, simultaneously.

Starting with such experiential knowledge as a basis, we can begin to acknowledge that human beings with any degree of conscience and empathy are faced with serious and profound questions as to how to live, how to handle life, and how to view the universe and human existence.

We can understand how efforts to gain insight into the nature of experiential horror, and also efforts to gain insight into the nature of healing from the trauma that horror brings, are both very important kinds of insight. They are insights pertaining to very basic human experiences. We can begin to appreciate how insights regarding principles that lead to courage, composure, understanding, and healing human interactions, are very important, very special.

Practical Evaluation

We use language, we make terms, we describe and define categories. We do so in the effort to communicate and to understand issues. We do so as we speak and think and feel. Even our intuition leads us to certain words, categories, impressions. We group certain things together. We contrast certain types of things with others.

We can make a category that includes all the evidence, all the experience, all the processes, all the instances in our life that are associated with healing and the positive insights related to wisdom, compassion, and understanding. That category could be labeled something like 'spiritual' or 'good', we do not have to quibble over the word we should use, but we can use such a category.

Once a category is conceived, it can conceivably be contrasted or contradicted by some other category, such is logic. And so a category can represent that which we group together as opposite, and there can be categories that are qualitatively different from each other, whether we use the word 'opposite' or not.

On a very basic level, some contrasts are of such different qualities, we can easily abstract a polar opposition. The contrast can be stark. There are immediate experiences of 'stark contrast', visceral experiences, gut sensations that some things are horribly contrary to each other. Such experiences can be combined with a sort of fog or dizzy quality in our heads.

Abstracting categories that are qualitatively different, can be very rooted in experience. Abstracting opposing categories can be as natural as distinguishing between more and less, beneficial and harmful, health and sickness, this is very rooted in our experience of life, it need not be intellectualism or rationalization.

Bad experience: horrific survival threats, fight-or-flight situations, dog-eat-dog competition, disease and death, natural disaster, war, torture, sadism, cruelty, extreme narcissism, harmful selfishness, hatred, needless strife, material limitations that result in unending problems.

Good experience: beneficial or consoling imagination, productive challenge and ethical exploration, harmonious cooperation, health and life, happy coincidences, peaceful resolution of problems, sane interactions with others, compassionate insight and action, understanding, deep listening, love, patience, spiritual aspirations of positive human potential.

The starkness of the contrast between these two sorts of experience, these two basically qualitatively different realities in our lives, is involved in a phenomenon called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a state where the mental, emotional, instinctual difficulty of reconciling contradictory perceptions, causes disorientation, discomfort, confusion, and sometimes a bizaare combination of enchantment and repulsion. Such is the contrast between horror and conscience, lived in experience, simultaneously.

What are we to do with such categories?

I may participate in understanding, or lack of understanding. I wish to participate more in understanding. I wish to encourage understanding. I wish to grow in understanding. The same may be said of the other positive qualities, the good experiences.

Acknowledging such participation, and WHATEVER is encouraging such positive qualities, acknowledging whatever potential is drawing forth such qualities, whatever processes that are at the root, whatever is based in such qualities, whatever is at the source, overflowing with such qualities... such is the nature of what people may choose to call Spirituality.

The other category, and participation in the qualities that have been placed in that category, is something else; it is obstructive, sickening, undesirable, opposed; it is qualitatively, categorically different.

At a very basic level of human experience, in any case, we treat these categories differently. The sort of insight we seek, leads us to develop more understanding of how to orient ourselves towards participation in the qualities associated with that which is better.

Beginning to Articulate Experiential Principles

From this standpoint/starting point, with such understanding of basic experiences as a background, we can begin to articulate some preliminaries for a Gnostic Path. I find these preliminaries to be very important, personally. I have found them to be crucial.

As difficult as life can be in this world, as much of a horror as the universe can be, it is often important to keep our eyes open, and we can use some real help.

If our eyes are closed, there may be danger, horror, and we may experience some of those things in the bad category, needlessly, participating in that which is worse for ourselves, worse for others, contributing to the sickness and needless idiotic suffering of the universe.

If we do not take the help that may be available, we may not experience those things in the good category, as much as we would like to, participating in that which is better for ourselves, better for others, contributing to the healing and spirituality and goodness that soothes the suffering.

What sorts of categories are these?

At this point, some will be tempted to expand the categories to include things that are generally considered good or bad, pleasurable or painful, desirable or undesirable, successful or unsuccessful.

But there are reasons for the way these categories were identified and described. One reason is that the categories, as they now stand, are basic, primary. Another reason is that there is quite a bit of concrete experience behind such qualities, and yet our expression has a bit of abstractness. The immediacy of concrete examples and experiences, has not drawn down the discussion into particulars, details, and materialistic reductionism, nor have we started with elaborate metaphysical speculations.

As far as such lines of reasoning go, I think this has progressed in a way that mostly avoids those sorts of tendencies to get mired in specifics or metaphysical abstractions and assumptions. It could be said that a sort of balance may have been reached, between abstract and concrete. Even if that is the case, the intention was not balance per se.

It seems to me that too often there is a sort of mystification of balance, and I would not wish to assume the value of the abstraction: balance. My intention was to start with basic experiences, without emphasizing the body or this world. As such, experiences in the body and in this world were abstracted a bit, in a way that is relevant to discussing various aspects of ancient Gnostic texts and teachings.

The mention of cognitive dissonance opens up a lot of questions, problems, issues. And that is a good thing. As a preliminary to a discussion of Gnosis, basic experiential knowledge has been emphasized and introduced as a starting point, as a focus, as a subject we can return to, if the issues become unweildy, or if we are concerned that we are straying away from experience, observation, reason, personal knowledge, and real insight. The complications, unresolved issues, and implications, can serve as subjects to direct a deeper exploration of Gnostic texts and teachings.

***

Technical Note: Categories

Quite apart from any opinions about what to make of such categories, these categories can be made on the basis of experiences. And the sort of experiences we are basing such categories upon, are experiences we have reason to take note of and group together. We may do so on the basis of the experience of qualitative contrasts, and on the basis of recognizing relationships of contrast.

Quite apart from what we might make of the nature of such contrasts, we can speak of contrasting categories, and use them productively. This is true whether or not the contrasts are really qualitative, distinctive, substantial, or indicating a real contradiction or opposition. It is useful to be able to describe two poles of experience that are oriented away from each other. Throwing away the tools of communication, would be a bit counter-productive to speach, writing, reason, or problem-solving.

Some may prefer to speak of a continuum from better to worse. For several reasons, I would prefer to speak of the experience of living in a world that contains starkly contrasting qualities, the experience of perceptions and evaluations that lead us to consider qualitative differences in our experiences, in reality. I would prefer to emphasize the importance of understanding the processes connected to such contrasting qualities, without implying an equation between such processes, without sidestepping the qualitative and evaluative distinctions that are made.

By speaking of two distinct categories, and allowing for recognition of the sense of qualitative difference, opposition, and stark contrast, those experiences, perceptions, and evaluations are acknowledged and can be understood and expressed more clearly in the terms that they are often experienced.

This will help serve as a basic experiential background for later discussions of Gnostic thought, a Gnostic Path.