Maggie's Farm

"In the beginning was the Word..." Our favorite blogging metaphysician, Gagdad Bob, takes on gnosis and logos. You have to give his stuff a little time - he should not post more than once or twice a week: you cannot rush a search for Ultimate Truth. Like all really smart guys, Bob has his eccentricities: he can switch from the cosmic to hearty conservative politics so fast you can get whiplash. I do not think you can sue someone for mental whiplash...or can you? It is time to blogroll him.

But gnosis is neither naturalistic or idealistic. Rather, it is logoistic. That is, the truth of things is found neither in the external world nor in the mind that contemplates it. The esoterist worships neither gaia nor the intellect. Rather, he worships the eternal Word that is the source of each. As expressed by an anonymous Christian friend, reality is founded upon the Word, or Logos, “whose objective manifestation is the world of prototypes underlying the phenomenal world, and whose subjective manifestation is the light or prototype of human intelligence”: “all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

So therefore, the only truly true and objective knowledge is knowledge of the Word. Objects are only real in the sense that they inhere in the Word--otherwise we could not know them. And our intellectual conceptions--our gnosis--are only true insofar as they reflect the Word. Real truth is not a construct or acquisition of the ego, but something to which we humbly submit.

His whole piece is here.