In my last post, I wrote about the world-woman-body-sex denying aspects of proto-Orthodox, Orthodox, and modern Christianity. In the very early days of the church, there was another version of Christianity, one that embraced women and the yin half of reality: the Gnostics.
Although this term is problematic and describes a wide array of views and practices, I’m going to use it because many of these early heterodox Christians focused on realizing Gnosis, a special kind of knowledge of the Divine; experiential knowledge that came from within. Gnosis is the same experience that is described as Awakening, or Enlightenment, in the East.
“All mystics speak the same language, for they come from the same country.”
- Louis Claude de Saint-Martin
These Christians used a variety of methods to aid their quest for gnosis, but there’s three that I’d like to highlight because of their similarities to Eastern spiritual systems like Taoism and Tantra:
The koan-like sayings of the Gospel of Thomas
Psychedelic wine
Sexual Alchemy
The thing all these three practices have in common is that they can spark realization of non-duality. Most people experience life through the lens of subject-object duality; the average person is the subject, while the rest of the world, with all the other people and everything else in the world, is the object. It’s you and everything else.
When subject-object duality dissolves, everything becomes the subject, the One without a second. It can be likened to the experience of becoming lucid in a dream; when you become lucid in a dream, you realize everything in the dream is not separate from you and is indeed one with your own mind.
I offer obeisance to the God and Goddess,
The limitless primal parents of the universe.
They are not entirely the same,
Nor are they not the same.
We cannot say exactly what they are.
How sweet is their union!
The whole world is too small to contain them,
Yet they live happily in the smallest particle.
These two are the only ones
Who dwell in this home called the universe.
When the Master of the house sleeps,
The Mistress stays awake,
And performs the functions of both.
When He awakes, the whole house disappears,
And nothing at all is left.
Two lutes: one note.
Two flowers: one fragrance.
Two lamps: one light.
Two lips: one word.
Two eyes: one sight.
These two: one universe.-Jnaneshwar
When a Taoist sees the image pictured above, he does not see the white side as good and the black side as evil. The small circle, or eye, of each fish shows that there is a seed of light within darkness, and a seed of darkness within light. Yin and Yang are not two separate things, but rather two sides of the same coin. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus pointed out the alchemical way of transcending duality:
Jesus saw some infants who were being suckled. He said to his disciples: These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom. They said to him: If we then become children, shall we enter the kingdom? Jesus said to them: When you make the two one, and when you make the inside as the outside, and the outside as the inside, and the upper as the lower, and when you make the male and the female into a single one, so that the male is not male and the female not female, and when you make eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then shall you enter [the kingdom].
-Saying 22
Orthodox Christians on the other hand, see reality as two separate, and opposed forces. God and the Devil, Good and Evil, Man and Woman, Heaven and Earth, Mind and Body, etc.
Woman, earth, the body, sex, and drugs are all considered yin in Taoism; one side of the whole of reality, equal to and just as important, perhaps even more important, than the yang, or male side. Contrast the words of mythologist Joseph Cambell with the Church Fathers’ belief that woman is man’s servant.
“The woman is life, and the man is the servant of life.”
Joseph Campbells words fit well with the I Ching’s Hexagram 11, Peace, where Heaven Supports Earth. The Church Fathers belief that woman was created to be man’s servant is reflected in Hexagram 12, Stagnation, where earth supports heaven.
Orthodox Christianity has always seen the yin half as not only inferior to the yang half, but downright evil. To be clear, this stream of thought runs through many different patriarchal religions and cultures, but it happens to be especially severe and pronounced in Christianity. Consider the words of the founder of the Catholic Church:
Simon Peter said to him, "Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life." Saying 114, Gospel of Thomas.
This kind of dualistic thought will never lead to salvation, because it never leads to a unified whole; a house divided against itself cannot stand. Although Jesus spoke the following words to an ancient group of political authorities, the same could absolutely be said today of all mainstream Christian Churches, who do not know the Way to Gnosis.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” Matthew 23:13
Below you’ll find some excellent videos about these three gateways, psychedelic wine, sexual alchemy, and koans, that the early Christians used to realize Gnosis: