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Photo: Bridgeman Art Library / Peter Will
illusion and enlightenment is in line with the Eastern approaches to religion, and the gnostic teachings therefore provide us with a basis from which to build a Western spirituality. It is in step with the great spiritual understanding which has been the treasure of the East for millennia. So what do the gnostic scriptures teach as the way to apprehend the identity of the self and the Divine? In effect, they say that to understand oneself is to understand God. In this thought we can catch a glimpse to one way in which Gnosticism will align with modern
understanding. As Elaine Pagels pointed out in the passage I gave as our Second Reading, "This is just the thought that underpins much of modern psychotherapy." She also says, "Few psychiatrists would disagree with the saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." In that statement, we see Jesus, the Nazarene as a guide and teacher exhorting us to come to a knowledge
of who and what we are - not to kowtow to the authority of a Church, but to seek for ourselves our own awakening, our own enlightenment. This Church is not here to be an authority, but rather to be the place wherein each one of us can find support and fellowship as we strive to understand ourselves more deeply, to be the place wherein we can work to gain for ourselves gnosis, the knowledge of the Divine
Revd. Dr. Ray Walder is the Minister of Blackpool Unitarian Church. www.blackpool-unitarians.org.uk
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