Theos-Talk Archives (August 2004 Message tt00648)

Humanity has always invested heavily in any scheme that offers escape from 
the body. And why not? Material reality is such a mess. Some of the earliest 
"religious" artefacts, such as Neanderthal ochre burials, already suggest a 
belief in immortality. All modern (i.e. post-paleolithic) religions contain the 
"Gnostic trace" of distrust or even outright hostility to the body and the 
"created" world. Contemporary "primitive" tribes and even peasant-pagans have a 
concept of immortality and of going-outside-the-body (ec-stasy) without 
necessarily exhibiting any excessive body-hatred. The Gnostic Trace accumulates very 
gradually (like mercury poisoning) till eventually it turns pathological. Gnostic 
dualism exemplifies the extreme position of this disgust by shifting all 
value from body to "spirit". This idea characterizes what we call "civilization".

More here:

The Information War
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/infowar.html

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