- published: 02 Feb 2013
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Gnosticism (from gnostikos, "learned", from Greek: γνῶσις gnōsis, knowledge) is a modern scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices found among some of the early Christian groups called "gnostic" ("learned") by Irenaeus and other early Christian heresiologists. The term also has reference to parallels and possible pre-Christian influences of the Christian gnostics.
Gnosticism was primarily defined in Christian context, or as "the acute Hellenization of Christianity" per Adolf von Harnack (1885), until Moritz Friedländer (1898) advocated Hellenistic Jewish origins, and Wilhelm Bousset (1907) advocated Persian origins. Consequent discussions of Christian Gnosticism included pre-Christian religious beliefs and spiritual practices argued to be common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism (especially Zurvanism), and Neoplatonism. The base of discussion of gnosticism changed radically with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, and led to revision of older assumptions, and a reorientation of modern scholarship following the 1966 conference on gnosticism in Messina.
Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American philosopher, psychonaut, researcher, teacher, lecturer and writer on many subjects, such as human consciousness, language, psychedelic drugs, the evolution of civilizations, the origin and end of the universe, alchemy, and extraterrestrial beings.
Terence McKenna grew up in Paonia, Colorado. He was introduced to geology through his uncle and developed a hobby of solitary fossil hunting in the arroyos near his home. From this he developed a deep artistic and scientific appreciation of nature.
At age 16, McKenna moved to Los Altos, California to live with family friends for a year. He finished high school in Lancaster, CA. In 1963, McKenna was introduced to the literary world of psychedelics through The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley and certain issues of The Village Voice that talked about psychedelics.
McKenna claimed that one of his early psychedelic experiences with morning glory seeds showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing." In an audio interview Terence Mckenna claims to have started smoking cannabis regularly during the summer following his 17th birthday.
Can you plan for life's composition
Anatomy of everything-stream of consciousness
Interworking of the mind set in motion
A lack of attention, paid to detail
Proving theories - so much harder with a living subject
Drawing conclusions, a lapse in judgement
Purest form, except nothing less
Technical in it's simplicity
Break it down, can't you see
So much harder when you are the living subject
Drawing conclusions
We did not invent the wheel,
We just keep it spinning
Like a thirteen story jump
From a twelve story building
All who had come before, some became
Architects of failure, others made success look easy
But you know it isn't
All I know is every lab rat has its day
Even though it lives its life the same as the others that way
pass away
Here we are, engineering