The Nature of the Mystery is Love

This is one post that would be better served if I just get out of the way and quote from Jesus and the Lost Goddess:

It is easy with a book such as this one, full of old myths and philosophical concepts, to get a picture of Gnosis as a heady, abstract theory about life. But the spiritually awake are heady with intoxication, not conceptualization. They are drunk with love, not sober with intellectual understanding. The purpose of philosophy is to open us to the possibility of ecstasy. The followers of the Christian sage Montanus were said to possess an ‘infinite number of books’, but called ecstasy the only true Christianity.

Previously we saw that the Gnostics imagined the motivation behind the Mystery coming into manifestation to be the desire for self-knowledge. This can sound somewhat dry, but it is only one way of picturing something which is completely beyond understanding. Valentinus imagines the motivation behind manifestation to be love:

‘Since the Father was creative, it seemed good to him to create and produce what was most beautiful and most perfect in himself. For he was all love and love is not love if there is nothing to be loved.’

(Page 181)

The nature of the Mystery is love, but this remains only a latent potential unless there is something to love. So the Mystery objectifies itself to give itself something beautiful to love and in so doing becomes love.

We are the Mystery wanting to love and be loved. Everyone is searching for love, whether they know it or not. There is nothing better than love. It feels good because it is the Good. Love is what happens when we connect deeply with another sentient being because love is the way we experience the mysterious paradox of being the One appearing to be many. Love is the Mystery aware of the Mystery, so when we plumb the depths of our being we fall in love with ourselves. Plotinus enthuses:

‘Beauty evokes wonderment, delicious longing and trembling with delight, so when you see that you yourself are beautiful within, what do you feel? What is the Dionysiac exultation that thrills your being? The surging upwards of your psyche? These are the emotions of someone enchanted by the spell of love.’

(Page 182a)

Gnosis is not a theory, it is ‘that love passion of vision known only to a lover come to rest in what he loves’ as Plotinus puts it. It is being content in the state of simple happiness that is naturally ours when we are free from ignorant fear and selfish craving. It is discovering we are more than we ever imagined or could ever imagine. It is a reality shift. It is the world turned inside-out.

(Page 182b)

Say the word and you’ll be free
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I’m thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?

(The Beatles – 1965)