Origins.09

9. Art , violence and Civilization.

Gnostics-first society, each life is lived solely for another life.

When 2 or more self-conscious beings are in each others’ company a powerful psychic atmosphere is generated between them. It distinguishes man from all other animals and is taken totally for granted. The atmosphere is charged with man’s emotional idea of the world as progress, continuity and tomorrow.  The first men to generate this atmosphere saw that the world needed changing, that another part from the natural was essential. Simultaneously society and civilization began to form. Society being a place where people lived together linked by a common ethic under some kind of law. Society is the forerunner of civilization and the need for progressive order. Civilization is the need for pleasure and and mans subconscious attempt to recreate the world of the gods representing the ultimate in pleasure and artistic creation. Society had to follow the exploitative example set by the gods combined with mans escapist idea of a collective existence whose continuity must never be interrupted by the serious consideration of death. But the message inherent in the evolution of self-consciousness is that to change the world man must first change himself. Already few could understand what this change was; and even fewer were-or now are-prepared to make the change.

The largest class of man found self-change impossible. He was too busy protecting and raising his young. Changing himself would have to wait. This was the family man. He discovered he had neither adequate time or means to protect them .The warrior caste emerged.The simple and more stupid kind of men , for their keep became the servants and menial class.

The smallest class of men saw that a celibate man did not have to worry about surviving to protect his offspring. He could concentrate on finding the power within to change himself, and so perhaps the world. This was the self-searcher; the original monk(from the greek ‘monachos’ –alone. They lived in isolation as the company of fellow men was not so important. A man trying to find the power within himself is inclined to live in isolation away from distractions and the idea of progress. He not so concerned about living or dying so many monks wandered away and were killed. Some of those who survived regained the idea of their immortality. Others pretended to. The pretenders were the first priests. They entered the habitations of men and set about distorting the truth with rites, ceremonies and interpretations and with magic or psychic force out of which arose worship and superstition. The monks who did realize the truth of I, the immortal intelligence reawakened the knowledge of mankind’s long-forgotten origins-gnosis.