Strange things are afoot on Hwy 61
"God said to Abraham, Kill me a son"
-from “Hwy 61 Revisited” by Bob Dylan
The following is an excerpt from Book One of the Tek-Gnostics Trilogy, titled: The Tek-Gnostics Heresies - Tales of Wonder from the Collective Conscious. Book Two, titled: Applied Tek-Gnostics - A Feild Guide for the Collective Conscious... will be published this summer, with Book Three scheduled for an early 2019 publication. More on Book Two later. We pick up the tale from Book One, with a primer on the Gnostic Demiurge mythology, followed by a tekgnostic take on eschatology, ancient and modern...
As indicated earlier (in Book One), Tekgnosticism relies upon intellectual and spiritual experience... a balance of the heart, mind and gut. As the renowned contemporary Gnostic Bishop, Stephan A. Hoeller has so eloquently articulated:
“Gnosis pertains to a specific illuminative understanding that expresses itself best through the medium of mythology. The truths embodied in these myths are of a more personal nature than the dogmas of theology or the statements of philosophy. In this way, the myth acts as a parable or metaphor, illustrating through the actions of the myth, complex insights.”
To illustrate this principle, let us examine the ancient Gnostic mythology surrounding the “Demiurge” entity...
As indicated earlier (in Book One), Tekgnosticism relies upon intellectual and spiritual experience... a balance of the heart, mind and gut. As the renowned contemporary Gnostic Bishop, Stephan A. Hoeller has so eloquently articulated:
“Gnosis pertains to a specific illuminative understanding that expresses itself best through the medium of mythology. The truths embodied in these myths are of a more personal nature than the dogmas of theology or the statements of philosophy. In this way, the myth acts as a parable or metaphor, illustrating through the actions of the myth, complex insights.”
To illustrate this principle, let us examine the ancient Gnostic mythology surrounding the “Demiurge” entity...
Within certain Gnostic schools of thought, there exists a complex of mythologies indicating that the God of the Old Testament, the burning bush God… the God of Abraham… was, in fact, a lesser entity known to them as the Demiurge. The Demiurge was a delusional “creator” deity. Although subordinate to the all-pervasive Monad or Godhead (what is referred within Tek-Gnostics as… That which shall remain nameless), the demiurge believed himself to be the one true God (ie: “You shall have no other gods before Me” - Exodus 20:3).
Further, the Gnostics held the belief that humanity was not only innocent of the corrupt nature of the world… not only free of original sin… they held within them, a divine spark of the true, transcendent, unknowable Godhead. The corruption that had crept into the material world was rather a product of the Demiurge’s derangement. Thus humanity’s “original sin” was a fallacy imposed by the early church, propagated with questionable intent.
Considering the Gnostic assertion that the creator God, known in the Old Testament as Yahweh or Jehovah, was indeed insane… this premise would seem to answer a lot of questions pertaining to the horrific maladies of “being of this world” or life on Earth as we experience it daily. A God that is insane would make “cynical sense” as to all the pain and suffering visited upon the world. In light of this mythology, it would then not seem so horrifically absurd that an insane God would ask Abraham, the founder of all three “Desert Religions” …to kill his begotten son Isaac, to prove his faith.
The great mythologies of the past often display commonalities, although expressed differently, across different cultures. Similarly, they tend to repeat themselves over the eons. They re-calibrate... modernize... to fit current cultural understanding. Thus the ancient Gods give way to newer mythologies such as monotheism or science or even alien intelligences, as humanity’s view of universe evolves.
Certain contemporary mythologies seem to have devolved back into a dogmatic, eschatological, dumbed-down rendering of archaic end-times prophecy. Specifically, the dominant desert religions were (and are) obsessed with imagery of Armageddon... righteous battles, catastrophe and final judgment. These desert religion’s more mystical (and suppressed) factions, such as the Kabbalahists, the Sufis and especially the Gnostics, foretold of an Apocalypse (from the Greek: apokálypsis) which literally translates as a “lifting of the veil” or revelation... a steady increase in light... a change in focus from folly to wisdom.
Contemporary desert religious hierarchies seem to condone a violent, fundamentalist prophetic anticipation of a coming messiah/antichrist apocalyptic showdown. Rather than embrace the mystical view, they support a simplistic, us vs them… saved vs damned… and most importantly, for reasons of controlling the masses… pie in the sky, bye and bye, doctrine. This position clearly indicates that contemporary organized religious institutions are primarily governmental (read: manipulative) as opposed to spiritual, in nature.
The “technological singularity” spin put upon this age-old myth… the “Geek Rapture” if you will… similarly prophesizes that at the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, the human era ends. The aforementioned religious hierarchy’s fear-driven connotation leads to the portrayal of the emerging AI/human dichotomy as that of an antichrist/messiah cataclysm. Hence humanity recalibrates the old mythology into more of the same apocalyptic fever. We shall return to this line of reasoning, in the next chapter.
With that said, the question is one of perspective. Do we accept the spoon-fed, militaristic “Apocalypse Now” eschatology, as propagandized by the desert religious hierarchies? Or do we choose to embrace the vision of a steady increase in light... a change in focus from folly to wisdom? The ancient Gnostics, Sufis et al, chose to embrace the “lifting of the veil” mythology.
With that said, the question is one of perspective. Do we accept the spoon-fed, militaristic “Apocalypse Now” eschatology, as propagandized by the desert religious hierarchies? Or do we choose to embrace the vision of a steady increase in light... a change in focus from folly to wisdom? The ancient Gnostics, Sufis et al, chose to embrace the “lifting of the veil” mythology.
Tek-Gnostics Mythology
Likewise, Tek-Gnostics chooses a mythological increase of light narrative. We choose the mythology of a psychedelic apocalypse. We choose to experience humanity’s latest eschatological boogeyman… Technological Singularity… as a lifting of the veil… a change in focus from folly to wisdom. We choose these mythologies to help inform our worldview and to empower our interaction within our world, as an intelligence agent… an Intelligence Engineer.
The great Zen master, Alan Watts, often spoke of an ancient Earthling myth in which the sustaining force of Universe (God as it is oftentimes referred to in the West) manifests all that is within Universe while dreaming. As God dreams... the dream transforms into our cosmos, projecting countless billions of tiny holographic specks of itself, to materialize the physical realm. God assumes the roles of galaxies, stars and planets… the myriad creatures of Universe… and thus becomes completely immersed in strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening.
Since God is all there is within & without Universe and since there is no “other” in which to play with, God plays a cosmic game of “hide & seek” with itself. Hence these adventures we call life, take the form of a great game or play within God’s dream.
Since God is all there is within & without Universe and since there is no “other” in which to play with, God plays a cosmic game of “hide & seek” with itself. Hence these adventures we call life, take the form of a great game or play within God’s dream.
In the heat of game-play within our cosmic RPG …God temporarily forgets its true nature of oneness. This forgetfulness seems to span the entire cycle of Universe. Eventually, God awakens from the many dreams and fantasies and remembers its true identity, the one and eternal Self of the cosmos who is never born and never dies. At this moment, all that is… returns to the source. Thus Universe goes round… now advancing… now receding… for eternity.
This elegant, Gnostic-like mythology puts an interesting twist upon the demiurgic allegory. It is of ancient origin, yet can be used to poetically describe the evolving theories of modern physics, in its speculation on the nature of Universe. This particular modern myth resonates with Tek-Gnostics mythology. The tekgnostic consciously choose a mythology devoid of Deific Derangement.
Instead, the tekgnostic system of perception facilitates a way of experiencing all reality, including the manifest cosmos, as the outcome of creative play by the divine absolute. Our system is designed to help us remember our trials and tribulations as a kind of game or drama which is being acted out by the eternal Self of Universe. We strive to be mindful of, and honor the spark of the divine within each of us. God hides in the roles and personalities of separate entities. We… as the physical manifestation of those entities… seek.
We seek to explore our world in pursuit of gnosis... a knowledge that does not come from mere book learning, but from an inspirational flash of insight. Book learning and study is the preparation... the homework, if you will. Gnosis is the moment when the hard work of study pays off... the spark of epiphany that takes one to a deeper level of understanding. This light-bulb moment is the lifting of the veil, the increase of light that the ancient mystics spoke of. It is also an instance of synchronicity, as put forth by Carl Jung.
Instead, the tekgnostic system of perception facilitates a way of experiencing all reality, including the manifest cosmos, as the outcome of creative play by the divine absolute. Our system is designed to help us remember our trials and tribulations as a kind of game or drama which is being acted out by the eternal Self of Universe. We strive to be mindful of, and honor the spark of the divine within each of us. God hides in the roles and personalities of separate entities. We… as the physical manifestation of those entities… seek.
We seek to explore our world in pursuit of gnosis... a knowledge that does not come from mere book learning, but from an inspirational flash of insight. Book learning and study is the preparation... the homework, if you will. Gnosis is the moment when the hard work of study pays off... the spark of epiphany that takes one to a deeper level of understanding. This light-bulb moment is the lifting of the veil, the increase of light that the ancient mystics spoke of. It is also an instance of synchronicity, as put forth by Carl Jung.
The tekgnostic does not distinguish between himself and the world...
The needs of other people are as his own.
He is good to those who are good...
he is also good to those who are not good.
Thereby he increases the good.
He trusts those who are trustworthy...
he also trusts those who are not trustworthy.
Thereby he increases trustworthiness.
The tekgnostic lives in harmony with universe
and his mind is the world’s mind.
So... he nurtures the worlds of others as a mother does her children.
-from the Tek-Gnostics Codex
In the pursuit of our explorations, we will employ the existent networking artifacts at our disposal to advance our knowledge and communicate that information. For it is in the utilization and interaction of earth’s global electronic medium that the tekgnostic Intelligence Engineer’s unique opportunity for acquiring and disseminating knowledge presents itself. In this way, the intelligence amplified path to singularity becomes a marriage of the electronic medium… the artificial intelligence, with the epiphany of human consciousness, with natural intelligence.
This marriage combines the computational power of AI, with the spiritual power of humanity. It is what keeps humanity in the evolutionary game. The balance of human and machine intelligence is the Intelligence Amplified path forward to the Century of Singularity …and beyond.
