On May 16, 10:32 am, aio <mwda...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> You are right to suggest that the Gnostic's saw the body as a prison
> however this only applies to certain situations.
> You note
> Apocryphon According to John
> "And I entered into the midst of their prison, which is the prison of
> the body. And I said, 'He who hears, let him get up from the deep
sleep."
>
> Yet in that same Apocryphon you have
> "And he said to the authorities which attend him, 'Come, let us create a
> man according to the image of God and according to our likeness, that
> his image may become a light for us.' "
>
> "And the power of the mother went out of Yaltabaoth into the natural
> body, which they had fa****oned after the image of the one who exists
> from the beginning. The body moved and gained strength, and it was
> luminous."
>
> "And they said to Yaltabaoth, 'Blow into his face something of your
> spirit and his body will arise.'"
> (this above quote is interesting because this is baptism by
> Spirit/Breath instead of the more common baptism by water.)
> ================================
>
> Their is no doubt that the Gnostic's like the "Orthodox ones" saw the
> body as made in the "Image of God" and like the "Orthodox ones" they
> saw it as a Temple where one could find God.
>
> Teachings of Silvanus
> "You were a temple, (but) you have made yourself a tomb. Cease being a
> tomb, and become (again) a temple, so that uprightness and divinity may
> remain in you."
>
> "Let Christ alone enter your world, and let him bring to naught all
> powers which have come upon you. Let him enter the temple which is
> within you, so that he may cast out all the merchants. Let him dwell in
> the temple which is within you, and may you become for him a priest and
> a Levite, entering in purity."
>
> Do not bring grief and trouble to the divine which is within you.
> But when you will care for it, will request of it that you remain pure,
> and will become self-controlled in your soul and body, you will become a
> throne of wisdom, and one belonging to God's household. He will give you
> a great light through it (wisdom).
>
> ============================
> The problem is that we have two situations
>
> we have Spiritual knowledge and we have Carnal knowledge
> we have knowledge of the breath and we have knowledge of the flesh
> we have pleasures of the Spirit and Pleasures of the flesh.
> We have Breath quickens the flesh and we have the flesh quickens the
breath.
>
> Romans
> 008:011 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead
> dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall
> also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in
> you.
>
> 008:006 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually
> minded is life and peace.
>
> You have two directions and one can chose either "externals", Flesh and
> fleshly pleasures or "within", Spirit and Godly pleasures.
> A spiritual man sees a man who is attending to externals and he sees a
> man who is in a prison while if he sees another man attentive to his
> spirit/breath within then he sees a man who is in a temple and a temple
> in which God dwells. The problem with the prison perception of a
> person in a body is that to get out of the prison one must go within.
> The path to liberation or to God is an inward path not an outward one.
> To a man who truly accepts Jesus/God then Jesus/God breaths him he does
> not breath himself. This is true and is not a function of religion. The
> element that determines which direction one goes is the mind. If the
> mind attends to externals then one goes that direction if the mind is
> quited and at rest and one attends to ones Spirit/breath then one goes
> to God.
>
> AIO
>
> Catawumpus wrote:
>
> > aio <mwda...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:
> >
> >> Yes Mortification of the flesh to purify the Soul(breath) is common
> in many religions but you still need the soul (breath).
> >
> > Gnosticism in particular (not religion at large) goes well
> > beyond mere mortification of the flesh by attacking the material
> world and describing the body as a prison for the soul.
> >
> >> Clearly the carnal is not the path to the Spiritual. The problem is
> that unless you have a carnal body you can not get to God.
> >
> > In gnosticism the problem is that the spirit is trapped in
> > the body and in the world more generally: an evil place shaped by
> the Demiurge, not by God. Of course the story varies.
> > Sometimes there are demiurges, plural (the Simonians' malicious
> angels, for example), sometimes the world is an exile
> > or a labyrinth (the thinking of the Valentinians and the
> > Naasenes respectively), and so forth. Many gnostic schools and
> writings, none entirely alike, some of them with their own conflicts.
> But the central world-rejecting, life-denying theme is unmistakable.
> >
> > -- Catawumpus
Very well written.
Are you trying to tell us carnal knowledge is a bad thing? Mary
Magdalene may be of another opinion.
BrentB
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