Maybe a very psychologically healthy person can have a literalistic view. Someone who is already fully capable of loving, and being loved, and working successfully within a carrier they like. But for someone who cannot do that, or will not, they benefit from a different type of exploratory relationship with religious concepts, and so the Gnostic route is better for them. And not the body is evil kind of literalistic Gnosticism. But the metaphoric, Jungian type that harmonizes aspects of ones mental life, ones archetypes, and a bunch of other words like that. Here are some quotes.
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The interest which Jung expressed in the gnostics had to do, not with their lifestyle, but with the proximity of their writings to unconscious processes. Schuyler Brown
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Literalistic interpretation of religious language leads to deception, which only the inner knowledge of the Gnosis can escape. Schuyler Brown
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That is to say, rational discourse and fantasy language come from different parts of the psyche. Gnostic texts are esoteric because their meaning depends not on the public conventions of rational discourse but on correspondences hidden in the deep structure of language, to which ego consciousness has no direct access. Schuyler Brown
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What makes this text striking, as I read it, is the authors deliberate refusal to take sides the author of Philip is trying to show that both those who say marriage is bad and celibacy good and those who say celibacy is bad and marriage good are deluded. For, this author insists, neither marriage nor celibacy is good or bad in itself. Its moral quality depends upon the person involved and upon what diet (way of life) is beneficial to that person. Elaine Pagels
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In the true Paradise, Philip declares no one, least of all God, will say, Eat this, do not eat that. On the contrary, Philip says, God has a garden This garden is the place where they will say to me, eat this, or do not eat that, just as you wish.
- Elaine Pagels
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Philip calls the root of evil the impulse toward anger, lust, or hatred that can grow and fester within any one of us. The root of evil is hidden within everyone. The author goes on to explain to his fellow Gnostics what we would today call the power of the unconscious As long as we remain unaware of this potential for evil within us, it remains hidden from our consciousness, and it thereby holds great power: What is hidden within a person has great power, until it comes to light and is exposed As for ourselves, let each of us dig down after the root of evil within us, and pull out the root from the heart. It will be plucked out if we recognize it. But if we do not recognize it, it takes root in us and produces its fruits in our heart. It masters us and makes us its slaves. It takes us captive so that we do what we do not want, and what we do not want to do, we do. It grows powerful because we have not recognized it. - Elaine Pagels, and also Gospel of Philip
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The holy book of Judaism served as a point of reference, a background against which the gnostics were able to highlight their deviations. Even their antagonism reveals their indebtedness. Gnosticism, in turn, left a lasting imprint on the Judaism from which it had sprung. As Gershom Scholem has shown, strong echoes of Gnosticism are found in the Kabbalah and other sources of Jewish mysticism. Walter Sokel
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The religious nature of Kafkas thinking and sensibility becomes clear if we look at one dominant explanation of the etymology of the word religion. According to this etymology, the Latin word religio originally signified a holding or a tying back, a restraint, or a bond and denoted a sense of absolute obligation and dependence. In Kafkas case, such religio manifests itself as his sense of living under absolute laws which obligated him in his deepest being but remained incomprehensible to his rational understanding. Walter Sokel
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One of the most mystifying Nag Hammadi texts is Thunder: Perfect Mind, a monologue by a female revealer, Thunder, who speaks of herself largely in terms of antitheses. She is the first and the last, the honored and the scorned, whore and holy, wife and virgin, mother and daughter. Paradoxically, she is also barren, but with many sons; she is knowledge and ignorance, shame and boldness, strength, and fear Thunder collapses various gender and family categories: she is bride and bridegroom; her husband is her begetter; she is her fathers mother and her husbands sister; and her husband is her child. Plays on paradoxes, violations of Aristotelian logic, and divine complaints about the lack of intelligent adherents characterize Thunders utterances.
- Jorunn Buckley
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The primacy of the image in Gnostic writing and the lack of concern for rational consistency suggest that we are dealing here with poetic discourse. Schuyler Brown.
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The interest which Jung expressed in the gnostics had to do, not with their lifestyle, but with the proximity of their writings to unconscious processes. Schuyler Brown
----------------------------------------------------------------
Literalistic interpretation of religious language leads to deception, which only the inner knowledge of the Gnosis can escape. Schuyler Brown
---------------------------------------
That is to say, rational discourse and fantasy language come from different parts of the psyche. Gnostic texts are esoteric because their meaning depends not on the public conventions of rational discourse but on correspondences hidden in the deep structure of language, to which ego consciousness has no direct access. Schuyler Brown
----------------------------------------------
What makes this text striking, as I read it, is the authors deliberate refusal to take sides the author of Philip is trying to show that both those who say marriage is bad and celibacy good and those who say celibacy is bad and marriage good are deluded. For, this author insists, neither marriage nor celibacy is good or bad in itself. Its moral quality depends upon the person involved and upon what diet (way of life) is beneficial to that person. Elaine Pagels
----------------------------------------------
In the true Paradise, Philip declares no one, least of all God, will say, Eat this, do not eat that. On the contrary, Philip says, God has a garden This garden is the place where they will say to me, eat this, or do not eat that, just as you wish.
- Elaine Pagels
-------------------------------------------------------------
Philip calls the root of evil the impulse toward anger, lust, or hatred that can grow and fester within any one of us. The root of evil is hidden within everyone. The author goes on to explain to his fellow Gnostics what we would today call the power of the unconscious As long as we remain unaware of this potential for evil within us, it remains hidden from our consciousness, and it thereby holds great power: What is hidden within a person has great power, until it comes to light and is exposed As for ourselves, let each of us dig down after the root of evil within us, and pull out the root from the heart. It will be plucked out if we recognize it. But if we do not recognize it, it takes root in us and produces its fruits in our heart. It masters us and makes us its slaves. It takes us captive so that we do what we do not want, and what we do not want to do, we do. It grows powerful because we have not recognized it. - Elaine Pagels, and also Gospel of Philip
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The holy book of Judaism served as a point of reference, a background against which the gnostics were able to highlight their deviations. Even their antagonism reveals their indebtedness. Gnosticism, in turn, left a lasting imprint on the Judaism from which it had sprung. As Gershom Scholem has shown, strong echoes of Gnosticism are found in the Kabbalah and other sources of Jewish mysticism. Walter Sokel
--------------------------------------------------
The religious nature of Kafkas thinking and sensibility becomes clear if we look at one dominant explanation of the etymology of the word religion. According to this etymology, the Latin word religio originally signified a holding or a tying back, a restraint, or a bond and denoted a sense of absolute obligation and dependence. In Kafkas case, such religio manifests itself as his sense of living under absolute laws which obligated him in his deepest being but remained incomprehensible to his rational understanding. Walter Sokel
---------------------------------------------------------------
One of the most mystifying Nag Hammadi texts is Thunder: Perfect Mind, a monologue by a female revealer, Thunder, who speaks of herself largely in terms of antitheses. She is the first and the last, the honored and the scorned, whore and holy, wife and virgin, mother and daughter. Paradoxically, she is also barren, but with many sons; she is knowledge and ignorance, shame and boldness, strength, and fear Thunder collapses various gender and family categories: she is bride and bridegroom; her husband is her begetter; she is her fathers mother and her husbands sister; and her husband is her child. Plays on paradoxes, violations of Aristotelian logic, and divine complaints about the lack of intelligent adherents characterize Thunders utterances.
- Jorunn Buckley
---------------------------------------------------------------
The primacy of the image in Gnostic writing and the lack of concern for rational consistency suggest that we are dealing here with poetic discourse. Schuyler Brown.