Gnosticism · ≈100–160 CE
Valentinus
Gnosticism · the Valentinian school · The Gospel of Truth
The most gifted of the Gnostics – who all but became bishop of Rome, and became instead the voice of a lost joy.
The essence of the teaching: Ignorance is the root of suffering, like a nightmare that torments the sleeper. Salvation comes not by punishment but by awakening: the recognition of the Father and of your true source in the Fullness.
Transmission
Valentinus taught that the world of suffering rests on one thing alone – on forgetting. The soul torments itself like a man in a bad dream: he is hunted, he falls, he is killed – and then he wakes, and all of it was nothing. So too does ignorance make terror out of emptiness. But when knowing comes, it scatters the forgetting as morning scatters the night. You are not punished for falling asleep – you are called to wake. And in the instant you know the Father, who is your source, fear falls away: you understand that you never left the Fullness, you only dreamed that you had.
The full transmission — for members of the School. Here is its essence and its taste.
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Gnosticism
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