A Gnostic View of the Future

by Stephan A. Hoeller

Stephan A. Hoeller is bishop of the Ecclesia Gnostica. He is the author of several works on Gnosticism, especially in its relationship to Jungian psychology, including The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, Jung and the Lost Gospels, Freedom: Alchemy for a Voluntary Society, and The Royal Road. This essay originally appeared in Voices on the Threshold of Tomorrow: Views of the New Millenium, G. T. Feuerstein, ed.; Wheaton, IL, Quest Books, 1993; pp 392-4. It is reproduced here with permission of the author.

I am a Gnostic. It was in my childhood, when the comforting orthodoxies of tradition seemed to fail a world suffering the Second World War's shattering blows, that the first glimpse of Gnosticism came to me, with its disclosure of long-forgotten truths. So overwhelmingly deep was its ancient hold upon my mind that I became a relentless gatherer of information about every aspect of this ancient tradition and eventually resolved to dedicate my life to its revival and dissemination.

The vision of the future that discloses itself to the view of the Gnostic is not a collective one. The future, therefore, to me is individual. It has to do with the fate of individual selfhood and only in a derivative sense with the future events taking place on the dark and sorrowful planet upon which we live at present. Gnosis is knowledge. And so it is on knowledge -- not on belief, or projection, or wishful thinking -- that one such as I relies in order to envision the future. I feel that I possess a certain kind of knowledge, based on my experience that disclosed to me the true character of life in this world of matter and flesh and also the destiny of my true selfhood beyond all materiality and embodied existence.

Viscerally, instinctively, intuitively, I feel life in this world of matter, space, and time to be a failed and flawed work, vitiated and corrupted in its most fundamental structures. Mainstream Christianity has given recognition to this insight with its doctrine of the fall. Gautama, the Buddha, expressed it well when he said that earthly life is suffering, from which only a radical awakening of the spirit can liberate us and transport us to Nirvana. While others may debate such insights, I know them to be true.

But these radically negative recognitions regarding all creation -- from the distant stars to the deteriorating cells of the body -- are accompanied by an equally radical certainty that is an organic part of the Gnostic vision: the conviction that within me dwells a mysterious thing that does not participate in the curse and the emptiness of this world. Within me, and indeed in all human souls, there dwells a secret fire, a spark, a ray of light emanating from the true, the ultimate Deity -- that distant, yet mysteriously ever-present Stranger, who in a paradoxical way is also our only true friend in our condition of exile.

What then is the future? Or, more properly, what is my future? What is the future of any and all who wake up to the recognition that they are exiles from worlds of boundless light and love and power, living in a dark place of suffering? Our task and thus our future is to regain our lost homeland by renouncing the snares of the powers that rule this world, to rediscover our unity with the transcendental realm of existence, to find again the kingdom of that original, ancient, and alien Light, the scattered and lost sparks of which we are.

These recognitions are brought to us by our own Gnosis and by the Gnostic tradition. The terms ''Gnosis" and "Gnostic" may seem vague, encompassing numerous diverse meanings. Gnostics were always encouraged to express the ineffable realities they glimpsed in any and all ways suitable to them at the time. Still, there always was a common agreement among Gnostics about the nature of this world and about the possibility of attaining to a life greater and richer than the one we dwell in at present.

How then may our task be fulfilled, our future realized? Am I, are we, strong and wise enough to accomplish a work of such tremendous magnitude; can we overcome the great difficulties that stand in our way? Yes, because we are not alone. We receive help if we possess the humility to accept it. We have not been left unaided in the wretchedness in which we have become involved. Manifestations of the Truth in human form have come to us repeatedly: Buddha, Zarathustra, Mani, Jesus. These messengers have the capacity to arouse our sleeping souls to awareness of our plight and to bestow the grace that will assist in the task of overcoming the inertia our ignorance has laid upon us. Equipped with wakefulness and grace, we shall rise on high, leaving the weary phantoms of this world forever behind. Shining beyond all our dreams of glory and perfection, we will enter the world of Infinite Light, nay, we will become that light ourselves. While thus undergoing redemption from terrestrial limitation, we need not fear for the welfare of this world, nor for that of the beings living in it. Every time a human soul attains to liberation, the flaw in the world is thereby diminished. Freeing our souls by Gnosis is the best way we Gnostics know whereby to improve conditions in this world. Thus it has been during the first two millennia and shall be in the third.

Such is the future declared to me and to others by Gnosis. Understandably, it is not a future than can be partaken of by all at any time. Only those who have come to see the worthlessness of earthly aims and who have glimpsed the glories of their potential future state can realize this future at this time. The invitation to these recognitions is ever with us, though the response to the invitation must come from every individual soul.