Manicheanism
Posting to a Gnostic list:
I tend to have a darker vision of the world’s nature… more Manichean in
flavor, contrasted by a more optomistic and involved vision of a
Gnostic’s role in the world (also Manichean flavored).
… Duncan Greenlee’s little green book on the Manicheans influenced my
thoughts quite profoundly.
Of all the items in that book, his description of the Manichean vision
stuck in my mind… of sparks of light following either the path upwards
towards the Pleroma and freedom from the chain of material existence, or
downwards, towards the darkness, further emeshing themselves in the mire
of the material world … down one path, the sparks gradually brighten,
the other, gradually fade.
At the end of existence, when the last spark of light has managed to
escape from the material world, it will simply cease to exist… what
animates the world is the light within it.
In parallel with this, the concept of this plane of existence being the
scene of an eternal war between the forces of darkness, and light, evenly
balanced, has stuck with me (I think this is more Zoroastrian than
Manichean, even)… this is my vision, the balance for the otherworldly
focus of Gnostic salvation: while we are here in the world, we are
compelled to fight for the light, for the right, the good, the just -
this fight is part of the process of universal salvation, of the sparks
ascending towards the light of the Pleroma. This is not salvation by good
works, and in a sense, the ultimate outcome is irrelevant - we know the
world is imperfect, flawed, that as long as we are in it, the darkness
can never be defeated, the glory is in the act itself, not in the
victory. We are called, by the nature of our consciousness, to fling
ourselves into the battle, regardless of the odds.
