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5 Responses to “Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief”

1. Lorin Kee says:

   July 30, 2010 at 11:34 pm

   As I’m sure many others did, I purchased this book after hearing the interview with John Lash on Coast to Coast with Ian Punnett. Punnett was critical of Lash, stating that his book did not reflect a tolerant attitude towards people of faith. After reading the book though, I believe that Lash’s attitude towards the Christian world is ultimately one of compassion. The book is essentially a lamentation for a paradise lost to all of humanity. But it’s the in-depth examination of HOW the Gaian Paradise of the Gnostics/Pagans was lost to Christianity that is the most riveting (and incendiary) part of this book. From the ancient Hebrew cult called the Zaddikim come the origins of what Lash calls “The Redeemer Complex”, of which there are four components: the creation of the world by the male creator god; the selection of the righteous few to fulfill a divine plan; the mission of the creator’s son (the messiah) in the plan; and the final, apocalyptic judgment in which the world is destroyed so that the righteous can be saved by the accomplishment of divine retribution. Unlike the Pagan divinities, this salvationist creator god is a wrathful, vindictive “off-planet landlord”. The earth is void of any divinity and is simply spinning dead rock from which resources may be extracted. And so, this anti-human, corrosive ideology is rightly labeled by Lash as a peculiar kind of mental virus. And as Christianity comes on the scene, the virus goes pandemic.

   But what of the Christian virtues of love, charity and good will? Lash illustrates how this was never what the Gnostics were against when they wrote of the destructive influence of the Christian Cult. In fact, the Gnostics considered the Christian Beatitudes as self-evident – not something that should be written down as commandments to be followed. These Beatitudes are the sugary coating on Christianity that allows millions to swallow the Salvationism virus, and even makes being “anti-Christian” seem anti-human. I was very impressed that Lash draws from the work of two personal heroes of mine, Alan Watts and Terence McKenna. But Lash does an exceptional job of synthesizing the essential messages of these two individuals; the longing for McKenna’s “Archaic Revival” and the insanity of the monarchical image of God, spoken about by Watts. Lash shows how the Gnostics ripped off the mask of the monarch to reveal his true identity – the Demiurge, or the Archons. The subject of the Archonistic influence on humanity is one that will stretch credulity with many of the readers of this book. However, it is an important part of the Gnostic mythology nonetheless.

   Sadly, what we have today is what Lash calls a “Remote-controlled morality”. Divorced from our essential goodness, the moral dictates of Christianity are necessary for millions to simply be able to act humanely. However, this utilitarian function does not justify the ultimate harm done by Christianity. Lash shows that indeed, “Faith can be evil when it is invested in beliefs that blind humanity to nature, and impede the genius innate to our species.”
   
   Rating: 5 / 5
2. Daniel Pinchbeck says:

   July 31, 2010 at 1:18 am

   I first encountered the work of John Lamb Lash through his website, (…), when he posted a series of pieces on “2012″ — the end of the Long Count of the Mayan Calendar — from astrological and historical perspectives. In his essays, he defined the characteristics of various “end-time tribes” that were embodying aspects of futuristic consciousness. I began a dialogue with him on this subject, and he sent me his new book, Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief (Chelsea Green, 2006). This work is a tremendous achievement that reframes the debate about monotheism, offering a radical perspective on the destructive effects that have been unleashed by religious ideologies over the last two millennia.

   Not In His Image attacks the salvationist theology of the Judeo-Christian tradition from a Gnostic perspective, making a devastating critique of the moral conditioning and deep-buried suppositions of this heritage, which has shaped the modern Western psyche. As substitute, Lash presents a counter-myth and alternative cosmology drawn from the tradition of Gnosticism, featuring the goddess Sophia, who plunged from the Pleroma to become the physical and generative Earth, and the Archons, soulless off-planet entities who use the human propensity for error to lead us into increasingly destructive deviations from our evolutionary path.

   The populist and academic conception of Gnosticism considers it a radical offshoot from Christianity that was stamped out as the Holy Roman Empire gave way to the Dark Ages. Lash has a different perspective. In his view, the Gnostics were the inheritors of the wisdom and initiatory training of the Mystery Schools that flourished across the Classical World. This learned, pagan tradition had roots in the shamanic practices that predated the rise of Greece and Rome, and could be considered the indigenous spirituality of Europe. In some respects similar to Buddhism, the Gnostic tradition valued philosophical debate and direct mystical experience over received wisdom and authority vested in religious hierarchy. Lash connects Sophia to the modern “Gaia hypothesis,” developed by the scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, and argues that the Gnostic seers of the Mystery Schools were “deep ecologists” who taught “coevolution with Gaia.” The alienation from the natural world and the body that developed in Christianity was the result of a deception, leading to the “enslavement of humanity to an alien, off-planet agenda.” The Gnostics understood the basis of this error, and were persecuted for voicing their opposition to it.

   Lash is ruthless in analyzing the moral precepts and core concepts of the Old and New Testament. He shows the ways in which these texts were designed to appeal to the highest aspirations and ideals of humanity, but subtly twisted to create impossible incongruities. Humans were tricked into trying to conform to an inhuman code of perfection, which doomed them to continual failure in relation to an absolutist abstraction. Borrowing a concept from Tibetan Buddhism, Lash suggests substituting the concept of “basic goodness” for “original sin,” and argues that Gnostics were horrified by the Christian belief in the redemptive value of suffering.

   He argues that the moral ethos expressed by Jesus Christ — the “Divine Victim” — in the New Testament has the unfortunate effect of aiding what he calls our “victim/perpetrator” bond. The concept of “turning the other cheek,” for instance, only makes sense in world without aggressors. This precept instills a sense of otherworldly superiority in the victims of violence, while it helps the agenda of those who seek to dominate. “The ethic of cheek turning is utterly wrong because it obliges people who are not inclined to harm others to rely on those who do harm to embrace the same practice of nondefense.”

   The commandmant to “love thy God with all thy heart” is similarly distorted: “Who really needs to be commanded to love?” Lash asks. “We love spontaneously, through the power of love itself, which cannot be commanded.” Throughout the Gospels, Lash finds “a monumental effort to convert the human mind to the bad faith of betrayed humanity.” In our secular culture, it seems, the belief in a salvationist power that will liberate humanity at some future point has been transferred, unconsciously, from divinity to technology. In order to reconnect with our earthly powers, we have to deprogram ourselves from all concepts of a redemptive or divine force waiting outside of this realm.

   While Lash evinces a tendency to romanticize traditional and indigenous cultures, while ignoring some of the progress made by modern civilization, his critique still goes to the heart of the crisis of our current world, where disconnection from nature and entrenched belief systems have brought us to the brink of global chaos. It seems that we can’t find our way forward until we find our way back, utilizing that discriminatory intelligence — what the Gnostics called “nous” — that is our particular human gift.

   (…)
   Rating: 5 / 5
3. Between the Bookends says:

   July 31, 2010 at 4:02 am

   John Lash has very lucidly cleared the dust off of our religious history to reveal the true nature of the Gnostics. More tellingly, he reveals the true nature of Abrahamic religions and Salvationist Doctrine, and the toll this patriarchal view has taken on our society.

   While many people attempting to leave their fundamental backgrounds behind have tried to give Jesus and the Gospels a facelift, Lash suggests the entire program be altogether scrapped. He delves deeply into what the Gnostics, or telestes, as they called themselves, had to say about their ecstatic religion. Strangely, reading the words of their enemies seems to show them in an equally refreshing light.

   This is a truly scholarly work, and yet it’s accessible to the lay person as well. The occasional dryness is necessary given the topic. If you have any interest at all in understanding how Western religion has brought us to this dark place filled with war, intolerance, and bigotry, read this book. You may be surprised to find it’s not a deviation from religion, but a natural outgrowth of it.
   Rating: 5 / 5
4. C. L. Vash says:

   July 31, 2010 at 4:12 am

   Lash claims his life’s work evolved from orthodontic visits that gave him time to think. [A little like Stephen Hawkings' claim that ALS made him so slow at getting dressed that it gave him time to think.] One third of Lash’s book echoes things I’ve thought over a 72 year lifetime. The other two thirds comprise insights I can’t claim to have arrived at before Lash did but which mesh perfectly with the one third just referenced. The book is an amazingly incisive summary of what the JudeoChristianIslamic monotheistic mainstream belief system has done to us all in 2000 years. Someone has finally caught on to the problems but it may be too late for rescue. Systems theorist Ervin Laszlo thinks we may have about 7 years to save ourselves and the others with whom we share the planet. Lash’s JudeoChristianIslamic off-planet God definitely won’t do it for us. I have serious doubts that we’ll make it. But Lash and Laszlo offer rays of hope that younger people might “get it” soon enough to make some powerful corrective moves. If I were still teaching graduate students in psychology and related fields, I would make their books required reading. But I’m not. So I pray that someone will do whatever it takes to get the wisdom of Lash amd Laszlo before the people who can engineer needed changes.
   Rating: 5 / 5
5. J Irvin says:

   July 31, 2010 at 5:03 am

   Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, by John Lamb Lash, 2006

   There comes a time when change needs to occur. Things need to evolve and grow; people need to learn, rather than to live in a perpetual state of morbid religious beliefs and ideas.

   Part of that learning needs to come from history and from the facts of religion – and questioning indoctrinated religious beliefs. We need to investigate not just the bites of history and religion spoon fed to us by political and religious authorities, but from our own careful investigation into these matters.

   The 4th century murder of Hypatia, one of the teachers at the great schools of Alexandria, marked the beginning of the dark age of Christianity, a dark age that continues to the present day, though most do not see or recognize this fact.

   Jews and Christians murdering in the name of their god is a common theme in Judeo-Christianity’s sordid past.

   But what and who were they murdering? The so-called pagans and Gnostics were some of the most educated and advanced cultures/peoples on earth that were annihilated by these religious fanatics in the name of their god.

   And what kind of psychotic god requires his people to kill his other creations in his name?

   Most religious historians tell us that the Gnostic religion developed out of Christianity, not the other way around. But this actually requires us to believe that Christianity, unlike other religions, sprang suddenly from nowhere (as we’re told to believe). That the event/advent of Jesus, God’s so-called divine son, is what sparked the new, “true” religion. But is that really the truth?

   The historical record outside the Bible certainly does not support what we’re told to believe by the Church. If, instead, we look at Gnosticism as being far older than most believe, which many scholars have proposed, we suddenly gain a new and clear view of the origins of Christianity.

   And what of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Is it true that they had an impact on the evolution of Christianity as John Marco Allegro suggested in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth, and argued as one of the original DSS translators?

   At the council of Nicaea Emperor Constantine pulled from these and many other religious doctrines to create the Universal creed, the Catholic Church, Christianity.

   When we stop putting the cart before the horse, stop putting Christianity in the naïve realm of “sudden godly manifestation,” and start realizing the themes and correlations between these ancient, suppressed texts and cultures, and the formation of Christianity, the picture becomes clear.

   And it’s not a pretty picture. What is revealed is a horrific history of Christians and Church fathers in a systematic effort to destroy all record of Gnosticism and the true facts regarding so-called “pagan” peoples surrounding the Mediterranean region for more than a thousand years. These mass genocides, as they should be called, wiped out untold ancient knowledge and cultures and hid these great truths. The library at Alexandria being only one of many that fanatic Christians destroyed, causing the loss of a thousand years of continued and recorded intellectual tradition in the development of science, religion and mankind, marking these acts as some of the greatest intellectual crimes in all history. The annihilation of the Celtics, Gnostics, and other “pagan” or village folk in the systematic wars of Rome, not to mention the Crusades and inquisitions, the witch hunts, and the sheer ferocity of the “kill them all and let god sort them out” mentality, destroyed the ancient history of these peoples and their records. But did it destroy it completely?

   Fortunately the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi Library managed to escape the path of Judeo-Christian religious fervor, and we have on record much of what these people truly believed. And it wasn’t in a jealous, patristic god as we’re told; and the Gnostics and pagans weren’t baby killers and eaters – as we now know that this was intentional disinformation spread by the Church to hide the history of their own pagan origins.

   So what did these ancient people believe? They believed in a mother goddess, Sophia, and their ties to the Earth. They believed in the use of entheogens or psychedelic drugs, such as the shamans of today. They believed in Archons, an alien like creation that guides those who will be unquestioning and blind in their following of belief. They believed that the Judeo-Christian god, Yahweh, was in fact the angry, jealous god, an Archon, who fooled the masses into believing that he was the creator god, when he (or they), were more demon than God, more devil than Lord, a deception of historic proportions.

   Does this sound like a development from Judeo-Christianity? With a careful reading of the ancient texts we find that in fact Christianity heavily plagiarized many of these ancient Gnostic and pagan texts into Christian canon, not the other way around. We know because when we understand all of these documents as a whole, that one is the original, and the other plagiarized. When you have a piece of manuscript from a missing book, it’s quite easy to recognize where the passage fits once you find the rest of that book, and it is clear that the Bible came from that source, not the other way around.

   Freeing the mind from 2000 years of global patristic, nihilistic, suicidal tendencies will require us as a species to come to terms with this fact, that the father god figure can never be truth, because he’s always insecure, jealous, narcissistic, vein, angry and violent – schizophrenic. But there is another way — the planet-friendly vision of Sophia, the wisdom goddess embodied in Gaia, the living earth.

   This book is intellectual and deep. It is well written and well researched. I could go on all day quoting golden nuggets from its pages that Lash has pulled from the archives of history, but instead I’ll suggest that you read the whole book.

   Excellent! 5 stars.
   
   Rating: 5 / 5