Gnosis Puffeth Up

The dangers of truth seeking and how to avoid them

“Gnosis puffeth up, but love edifieth.”

These are the words of St. Paul.¹

It is a very important message. The seeker of truth is always faced with the danger of deluding himself into thinking that he has figured it out, has discovered the secrets of the world and the cosmos, knows how it all works. This is especially true for those who seek spiritual truth, but it also applies to those who seek worldly truth: who want to know what’s really going on.

Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know.

1 Corinthians 8:2

Now, the danger is that once you cross a certain barrier, perhaps because you had a realization about yourself or the world that shocked you and made you reconsider things, or because you have heard or read something deeply revealing to you, that you then go on to think you possess some kind of special knowledge, some secret key that others don’t have.

This special knowledge, this gnosis, puffs you up. And this puffed-up state is the enemy of true love.

It can lead rapidly from a valuable insight, the achievement of progress towards truth, to the adoption of your personal fake wisdom school, built on falsehood and delusion, that is rotten to the core.²

The danger is very real and can manifest in all walks of intellectual life: whether you are “initiated” into a certain academic field, study esoteric ideas, try to figure out what is going on in the world from a mainstream perspective or a conspiracy theory perspective or...

Even if you try to stay on guard about it, perhaps by studying yourself and seeking to “know yourself,” this very activity can still become a form of self-absorbtion—you become puffed up.

You feel special, which is the enemy of love.
You feel others are beneath you, which is the enemy of love.
You feel certain in your earthly knowledge, which is the enemy of love.
You think you have found the key to the next world, which is the enemy of love.
You think you can pin down the meaning of love, which is the enemy of love.

And yet, and yet… We cannot fully give up on the idea of esoteric knowledge, of Gnosis.³

Everyone who has been paying attention to what is going on, and everyone who has felt the need for spiritual growth (the two are deeply related), will surely agree that there must be something we can do, some possibility to figure things out:

There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

—Bob Dylan

Those of us who feel like that have no choice but looking for information, for knowledge about how everything fits together and what it all means. And yet we also know from experience that very few answer the call; most people cannot even comprehend what we mean by any of this. Like it or not, this makes our quest an esoteric one: going against the grain to seek enlightenment; a form of enlightenment that is, as of now, reserved for the few:

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

1 Corinthians 2:14

Those who feel the call, for whom truth feels like music that speaks to their hearts, unless it is a fake truth seeking that is more about feeling special than about humble spiritual growth, therefore, must be in touch with the Spirit, at least to a minimal degree. The quest, then, is about getting closer to the Spirit, about achieving a communion with the higher world, which allows one to discern not only the truth in ideas, but the truth about how to conduct oneself in real life on a daily basis, depending on one’s circumstances.

But this moving closer to the spirit, and with it gnosis/true knowledge, can only happen through love, informed by love, with love:

Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury. Love does not rejoice over wrong-doing, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

And that is why for Paul, love is the true key: for it transcends knowledge, shields truth-seeking from the ego, from the temptation of falsely elevating oneself, and instead brings one closer to and in touch with Spirit: a tangible connectedness that informs all life, makes alive, and is ever-present and discerning in all things big and small.⁴

But how do we defend ourselves against the temptation of getting all puffed up while we are not there yet? After all, as Paul said:

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

1 Corinthians 13:8-10

We must face the dilemma that as of now, we can know only in part. This means that for the time being, we need to defend ourselves against the delusion that we are anywhere near the full picture, a delusion which can have dire consequences indeed.

Intellectual Defense

When it comes to knowledge, perhaps the first line of defense is to accept a certain kind of relativism.

I don’t mean the silly sort of relativism that denies the existence of truth altogether, or that tries to bully us into questioning the most obvious of facts. That’s just sophistry and nonsense.

But when thinking about bigger questions, it is true that there are always different perspectives, different approaches, different ways of looking at things. These often seem, and indeed are, contradictory. How does causality work? In one sense, it seems to be something natural; in another sense, it is a human construct. Does a higher power create the world or do we humans? Both. Can we reduce everything to simpler parts or are the simpler parts derived from the whole? It depends on what you are trying to find out and how you go about it.

Has a poem more truth than a scientific treatise? Yes, and no. Do we need to prove the statements we make? Of course, and not at all. Is the universe dualistic? That is completely wrong, and very true. Does our intuition come from the deep past, the future, or a higher realm? Depends on how you look at it. Is the material world real, or just a chimera that will disappear when we know enough, like shadows disappearing in the light? Both. Are certain forms of alternative science closer to the truth than mainstream science? Maybe, maybe not. Should we follow moral rules, or our intuition? It’s complicated.

You get the idea.

Look at it this way: each of these ideas, of these approaches, when thought through in the right spirit, can illuminate a chunk of reality. We need many of those to illuminate various chunks of reality in order to grow closer to the big picture.

I know, this is a bitter pill to swallow. And perhaps these contradictions only appear to us as contradictions, and they could be unified under a new, all-encompassing perspective—a hidden variable of sorts that we just don’t see yet. “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.”

But the perfect isn’t here yet. Believing otherwise can quickly turn one to the dark side.

I think a better way of looking at it is to humbly accept the limitations of our intellect.

If you think science is not important, think again.
If you think religion, art and literature are not important, think again.
If you think love is not important, stop thinking.

Experience Before Gnosis

We talked about certain intellectual defenses that might be useful. But perhaps the most important defense against getting puffed up by knowledge, secret or otherwise, is right in front of us: our daily lives.

Nothing brings home the message, “What the heck do I know!?”, clearer than being confronted with immediate reality.

Hence it is so useful to be forced to earn money, for example. For all we might hate it, and justifiably so with the sheer amount of meaningless BS jobs out there, it makes it difficult to delude oneself that one’s grand theories are all there is to know and learn, or indeed that they are true at all. When faced with resistance in life, of whatever form, working on our character becomes paramount: working out what moving closer to the Spirit, of living true love, really means.

Family life, be it in a long-term relationship, marriage, nuclear family, in closeness to the wider family or regular interaction with close friends, is perhaps even greater a test for our outlook on life. There are as many different situations as there are individuals, so no blanket rules can apply, but if we can’t apply our knowledge to produce positive results, to change our way of being for the better, which is then also reflected in the improvement of our relationships, then this is a clear signal that we understood much less than we thought. On the other hand, if things go well, if we manage to bring more love into our lives, in whatever form, this can tell us we are on the right track.

Understanding and love go hand in had: if I don’t understand, I cannot really love, and if I don’t love, I will never understand.

Needless to say, looking down on people and feeling superior is the opposite of love. That isn’t to say we don’t need boundaries, and that we don’t need to defend ourselves against those who want to drag us down—defend ourselves against spiritual evil, if you will. But discovering how to recognize the spark in another’s eye, no matter their station or background, when they talk about what is dear to their hearts, can fill one’s soul, and the world, with love. So can, generally, a focus on others instead of an obsession with the self. Giving others what they need, what they truly need, and learning to get better at it, will reap plenty of fruit and manifest the Spirit that Paul was talking about in and around oneself.

All of that is learned not from books, and not necessarily in a monastery, but in life—whatever form that life may take.

Yes, truth seeking is in part an intellectual affair, but it can never be done in a vacuum. Our greatest access to truth is right in front of us; otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Only the feedback loop between knowledge and lived experience can generate the energy necessary for true and lasting change, even if it takes a lifetime to get there.

1. 1 Corinthians 8:1. “Knowledge” is used in many translations instead of “Gnosis,” and the King James Bible uses “charity” instead of “love," but for our purposes here I have combined the translations.

2. For a very insightful fictional illustration of such rottenness that contains a whole lot of true wisdom, I recommend the little book by Theodore Illion, Darkness over Tibet (1938), Adventure Unlimited Press, 1997

3. I’m not discussing the history of Gnosticism here but use the term “Gnosis” in the sense of a higher form of knowledge that we seek to attain in the quest of spiritual advancement.

4. For a fascinating and informative discussion of Paul’s theology, I will again highly recommend Timothy Ashworth, Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation, Routledge, 2016