What if Christianity is really just a myth... and the great Gnostic spiritual teachers, the Druid priests, and the shamanistic healers of Europe and North Africa were right all along

Video: http://gnosticmedia.podOmatic.com/entry/2008-12-29T01_40_24-0...




Basing much of Not in His Image on the Nag Hammadi and other Gnostic writings, John Lamb Lash explains how a little-known messianic sect propelled itself into a dominant world power, systematically wiping out the great Gnostic spiritual teachers, the Druid priests, and the shamanistic healers of Europe and North Africa. They burned libraries and destroyed temples in an attempt to silence the ancient truth-tellers and keep their own secrets. But as Lash reveals, when the truth is the planet Earth it cannot be hidden or destroyed.

Not in His Image delves deeply into the shadows of ancient Gnostic writings to reconstruct the story early Christians tried to scrub from the pages of history, exploring the richness of the ancient European Pagan spirituality--the Pagan Mysteries, the Great Goddess, Gnosis, the myths of Sophia and Gaia--and chronicles the annihilation of this Pagan European culture at the hands of Christianity.

Long before the birth of Christianity, monotheism was an anomaly; Europe and the Near East flourished under the divine guidance of Sophia, the ancient goddess of wisdom. The Earth was the embodiment of Sophia and thus sacred to the people who sought fulfillment in her presence. This ancient philosophy was threatening to the emerging salvation-based creed of Christianity that was based on patriarchal dominion over the Earth and lauded personal suffering as a path to the afterlife.


Restoring Balance – Reclaiming our Spiritual Heritage

John Lash’s new book… Not in His Image… narrates the retrieval of the ancient roots of humanity’s religious experiences and its flowering through our sacred and mystical communion with the Earth, and he challenges the many millennium-old dehumanizing Savior-Victim belief system, inclusive of man’s domination over nature.

He states his primary objectives in the Introduction: “To recover Pagan wisdom and restore the Sophianic vision of the Mysteries and in correlating these teachings with Gaia theory and deep ecology, add a spiritual dimension.” His research and experiences are melded with numerous insightful references from the codices of antiquity to historians, cutting-edge biologists and astro-physics to deep ecology.

From a brilliant perspective, Mr. Lash unravels historical textural evidence exposing the cover-up, conspiracy and agenda behind the betrayal of humanity’s spiritual heritage. Principals, he informs, deviated by a political system in the guise of religion. A religion modeled primarily from patriarchal
domination; ignited by delusional beliefs, intimidation and the power of suffering; leaving in its wake a horrific legacy of conquest and conversion by violent force, suppression and hypocrisy. “Salvation history
mirrors the hidden workings of our most narcissistic, self-destructive impulses.”

The rising tide of victimization that accompanied these beliefs, diluted our ancestors confidence in continuing to cultivate and live from their life affirming values, body-based morality and imaginative visionary endowments.

His exposition cites evidence describing the source and motivation behind the tragic eradication of the Mystery Schools by these forces. 2000 years later, this “world-wrenching tragedy meets a fateful moment.” In 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, providing what Mr. Lash refers to as “the ideological infrastructure of Christian religion.” In 1945 in the desert mountains, an Arab peasant found 13 volumes which were destined to become the Nag Hammadi Library. This choice cache was published in English in 1978 and reveals the other side of the story…rare writings including the Sophia Mythos and Pagan and Gnostic cosmology. Quoting from the book, “The message of the Gnostic revealers is theological semtex.”

While evoking the ambience of the Mystery sanctuaries, he quotes Walter Buckert, “Mysteries were initiation rituals of a voluntary, personal and secret character that aimed at a change of mind through experience of the Sacred.” “These schools were the universities of antiquity and their teachings were dedicated to the continuing consecration of the Earth as the Great Goddess – Sophia, whose unique wisdom is the living intelligence of the planet.” The Gnostic documents describes the lost creation myth of Sophia and how she became the body of our earth Gaia; about the Aeon Christos; about the Mesotes, the supportive intermediary to our self-guiding and self-correction and about instruction given by the Light.
The Mystery centers taught the arts of civilization, social organization, ecological ethics, language and writing skills.

The Gnostics spoke of the Anthropos, the genetic template of authentic humanity, “As a learning animal…free to err, correct and learn from our mistakes. Failing to own and evolve the intelligence innate to the species, we risk being deviated by another kind of mind, an artificial intelligence through which we become unreal to ourselves.”

He continues, “The Gnostics warned, the male-god fixation belies the preference for simulation over reality that is the primary risk of deviation for our species. We incur this risk through being exceptionally endowed with modeling and abstracting faculties. Preference for replication will come to the fore in human cerebral activity, taking on a life of its own, if not detected and kept within limits. Exposing and overcoming co-optive re-plication may be the spiritual challenge that decides the fate of Humankind.”(The origin of replication means to ‘hold back’.)

Within the last 30 years or so, “Western society has acquired a new spiritual dimension centered on the image of Gaia. The Gaia Hypothesis and deep ecology appeared in the world almost simultaneously.” Mr. Lash cites other converging links and feels hopeful that Gnosis will find its place within these movements, illuminating and deepening recognition of the intensive dimension of nature. He quotes Jeremy Narby, “How could nature not be conscious, if our own consciousness is produced by nature.”

Gaia-Sophia relies and waits for our awareness and communication of this reciprocal perception in our senses and telepathic resonance in our memory and thinking. So we might come to learn and understand
Gaia’s transhuman purposes and our contribution to Her correction.

“Loving Gaia is the highest calling of humanity.”
http://gardengaia.com/docs/Not-In-His-Image.pdf

THE GAIA THEORY
In science, a Gaia theory is a class of scientific models of the biosphere in which life fosters and maintains suitable conditions for itself by affecting Earth's environment. The first such theory was created by the English atmospheric scientist James Lovelock in 1969. He hypothesized that the living matter of the planet functioned like a single organism and named this self-regulating living system after the Greek goddess Gaia.
http://www.gaiatheory.org/