Deepak Chopra: "We return to God remembering him, and as memory returns, each of us is restored to knowledge of the Divine"

"Here we glimpse the universal theme of Gnosticism: a war between Sophia (“wisdom”) and the forces of darkness that has been waged since the dawn of creation and exists inside each of us. This inner conflict has left us blind to truth, but we can rediscover it because in his fullness (Pleroma), the Father provides a path back to the All, which can never be lost. Change a few terms here, and we can be reading the Vedas as recounted by the ancient Indian seers." - Deepak Chopra

>
> i have provided hundreds of pages of irrefutable evidence and
> knowledge of the Devi. i have also strongly cautioned against the
> avidya that the devotees of Her incarnation, Shri Mataji Nirmala
> Devi, are indulging in, and encouraging/enforcing others to do the
> same. Seeking such knowledge of the Devi-while strictly avoiding/
> rejecting such avidya at all times-alone makes life worthwhile, and
> the attainment of knowledge completely fulfils the ultimate purpose
> of existence. Such knowledge is far more priceless than Silence, and
> precedes it. Without such knowledge you cannot comprehend, far
> less learn how to maintain, Silence on Self. The Devi insists that
> liberating knowledge can be attained here in this world. There is
> nothing to surrender to Her except our ignorance and arrogance.
> Thank you Akash and Preeti for your excellent enquiry that will help
> many.
>

Knowledge is far more priceless than silence and precedes it

Reading Judas - The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity
"This language of "race" appears frequently in the 'Gospel of Judas'. Although the author often uses the plural "human races," in essence only two races exist: the mortal race (those who worship the false Gods of the lower world and are destined to be destroyed at the end of the age) and the immortal race (those who recognize their own spiritual nature and turn to the true God above)... Death, it would seem, is not inevitable, but a result of not learning how to distinguish between the mortal world where people live now and the eternal world above. Since humanity is created in the image of the divine Adamas above - in that sense, people come from the imperishable - they are capable of becoming imperishable."

Reading Judas - The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity,
Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King

The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore
The Gnostic Gospels

“I met a journalist from India recently who screwed up his face when I told him that I was writing about Jesus. I asked him why. “I loved being a Christian when I was a child back home,” he said. “But being a Christian in America makes me queasy.” It turns out that his faith was the product of missionaries, whose presence in India dates back to Saint Thomas—the same doubting Thomas who was invited by the resurrected Christ to touch his wounds—who reportedly sailed to the southern tip of India in 52 AD and founded the first church there. In one of the ancient churches in the state of Kerala, parishioners still adhere to Aramaic and Syrian rituals.

When innocence is lost, mystery vanishes with it. Sceptics aren’t alone in wondering if the miracles that Jesus performed—raising the dead, turning water into wine, or walking on the Sea of Galilee— aren’t exaggerations of real-life events. Conversion can be a tough sell, and it helps if the story you are selling contains magic.

We aren’t the first people to rebel against established religion, nor is this the first time church worship has fallen away in face of doubt. Among the early Christians sects, some challenged the notion that praying to Jesus was enough to reach God. They chafed at church authority, believing it was up to each Christian to find God through personal knowledge of him and thus attain enlightenment. They felt that enlightenment, not salvation in Heaven, was Jesus’s mission. Here is how one of their most lucid scriptures, known as the Gospel of Truth, outs it:

Forgetfulness did not exist with the Father, although it existed because of him. What exists in him is knowledge, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be destroyed and that they might know the Father. Since forgetfulness existed because they did not know the Father, if they then come to know the Father, from that moment on forgetfulness will cease to exist.

Forgetfulness, not sin, is seen as the root cause of error, our loss of contact with God. We return to God remembering him, and as memory returns, each of us is restored to knowledge of the Divine. Because knowledge was so crucial to these early sects, they became known as Gnostics, from the Greek word gnosis, or “knowledge”.

You can immediately see the appeal of Gnosticism to the modern mind. It sounds liberal, nonauthoritarian, and open-ended. The Gospel of Truth accuses conventional Christians of missing the whole point of Jesus, falling into blind worship instead of trying to seek enlightenment:

Through [Jesus, God]enlightened those who were in darkness because of forgetfulness. He enlightened them and gave them a path. And that path is the truth which he taught them.

To our ears, this sounds like a doctrine of personal growth, and that makes the Gospel of Truth extremely appealing. The Jesus it portrays has knowledge of the All, an imperishable fullness that is the divine gift to humanity, if only people will open their eyes.

[Jesus] became a guide, quiet and in leisure. In the middle of a school he came and spoke the Word, as a teacher. Those who were wise in their own estimation came to put him to the test. But he discredited them as empty-headed people. They hated him because they were really not wise men.

Here we glimpse the universal theme of Gnosticism: a war between Sophia (“wisdom”) and the forces of darkness that has been waged since the dawn of creation and exists inside each of us. This inner conflict has left us blind to truth, but we can rediscover it because in his fullness (Pleroma), the Father provides a path back to the All, which can never be lost. Change a few terms here, and we can be reading the Vedas as recounted by the ancient Indian seers.”

Deepak Chopra, The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore,
pgs. 30-32
Harmony Books, February 2008
ISBN:9780307338310

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