Apocryphal books (New Testament); Christian heresies -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Gnosticism
The way to obtain this elevation in the scale of being is, perhaps, left
purposely obscure, but it can apparently be gained by certain
initiations or mysteries, which like the Mysteries of Eleusis will give
the initiate the knowledge of the universe, how it came to be, and how
it will end. These also are progressive and culminate in the “One Word
of the Ineffable One,” the effect of which is so tremendous that if it
be spoken over the dying, or for the dead, whether partly initiate or
wholly uninitiate, it will expedite his passage to the heaven to which
his initiation entitles him, or, in the case of one wholly uninitiate,
will ensure his reincarnation in a “righteous” body, which will “find
the God of Truth and the exalted mysteries, and will inherit them and
the Light for ever and ever.”[23] The way to this and to the Mysteries
in general is “the renunciation of the whole world and all the matter
therein.”
Beside this, however, there are lesser mysteries which will admit the
faithful recipient to heaven and privileges less exalted indeed than
that last described, but will yet confer on him great beatitude after
death. These, known collectively as the “Mysteries of the third Space,”
involve a “Defence” a “Password” and a “Symbol” which have to be handed
in by the dead in his flight upward so as to procure him uninterrupted
passage to the heaven of which he has received the mystery. Of these, it
is said that the disciples have no need, because nothing of the sort is
required by the recipients of the higher mysteries, but Jesus adds that
they are to be found in “the two great Books of Jeu” which “Enoch wrote
when I spake with him out of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life
in the Paradise of Adam.”[24] In spite of these assurances, Andrew
provokes the Saviour by asking how “men of this world” can be expected
to adventure after death upon the long and dangerous journey among all
the Great Powers of the Treasurehouse and their subordinates, and the
Saviour reminds him in reply that they and He are all of the same
origin, being made from “the same mass and the same matter and the same
substance” and are all “out of the same Confusion.”[25] On this, the
other disciples successfully implore Jesus to pardon Andrew, and this
Document ends in the middle of a sentence in which He declares that He
has been sent for the remission of sins.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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