The Faith Column: Gnostic Psychology

[Ahimsa]

There exist many different schools in the world that have methods to develop the many internal senses, but all this could lead us to disorientation and failure, if we did not begin by developing the sense of psychological self-observation.

The development of this sense of intimate observation leads us gradually towards knowledge of our self, permitting us to carry out a psychological inventory of what we have in excess, and of what we are lacking. Arriving at this stage of the knowledge of oneself, our other internal senses will also have been developed extraordinarily.

We discover that we contain many psychological defects, each personified in a specific “I” or “Self”. As it is that we have thousands and up to millions of defects, it is obvious that there are many people living inside us.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Interesting. I read and studied at one time the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Some of what is in this article is also found in his writings.

The idea of Being is rooted in a philosophy that the divine exists within us. The stripping of psychological excess I believe aligns to the Eastern philosophical belief of letting go of Ego. Not to be confused with the psychological definition of ego. Two different things.

Self realization, the understanding of one’s own inner divinity, that inner Master, is not possible unless Ego is removed.

I studied that, to a point, only because I was an atheist and whether you were talking about God as an external being, or God as an internal divinity, I rejected the idea of either.

That led me to the postmodern version of psychological excess and the removal of it. This is called nihilism.

Rebecca

 

[Abraxsis]

There are many psychologists like Carl Jung that spearheaded the Neo-Gnostic movement. Their search of God and knowledge of the human mind lead them to Gnosis through depth psychology.