THE GNOSTIC DOCTRINE

THE GNOSTIC DOCTRINE

    1. The Holy Ghost is the feminine counterpart of Christ – the Sophia
    2. God is manifest in the union of Christ and Sophia. This is the Trinity – both in the Universe and in man.
    3. The golden rule supersedes all other commandments and laws. It teaches love as a way of life and this love includes sexual love.
    4. In the teachings of Christ there are no prohibitions of the enjoyment of life and the world, of eating, drinking, merrymaking and sexual love.
    5. Christ wanted against undue attachment to material things, against selfishness, avarice, and against prostitution of the body and spirit.
    6. He taught the immanence of God and the Kingdom of Heaven.
    7. The consciousness of immortality and the state of blessedness is attained by the union of the Christ in man the Sophia in woman.
    8. Brotherhood in Christ is attained by the practice of unattached love in all human relations.
    9. All worldly attachment is futile save in this, that it leads to redemption through suffering.
    10. Virtue does not consist in self-sacrifice, chastity and renunciation of the world, it consists in the sacrifices of the infantile self, of purity in love and friendship, and in the renunciation of undue attachment to worldly possessions and inordinate desires.
    11. Therefore attainment does not consist in the denial of desire and avoidance of temptation; but in the whole hearted acceptance of all experience and all changes as initiations in the way of love.
    12. Formal Christianity has distorted, perverted and misinterpreted the teachings of Christ. Mankind can only find happiness by rejecting the false doctrines of sin, guilt, hatred and intolerance; and in accepting the gospels of Love.