Authority is an interesting concept, especially when taken into spirituality. What determines authority? I am reminded in reading and looking at our world of many of the games that my college professors had to play to keep their jobs. Many were burnt out with the games, yet were locked into playing them for the rest of their careers, and you could tell that many were tired of it. One of my professors, an “authority” on Milton, was haggard, on his second wife, and his daughter, who was a student of his and a peer of mine, hated and despised him. I watched him, hunched over his podium, looking over at eager students, bored students, a spiteful daughter and all the range in-between and anyone in the room could tell he was sick of it.

His life consisted of constantly arguing his point of view. He had to refer to his sources based in history, archeology, other texts, mythology of the time, culture of the time, and so on and so forth. He was always defending his interpretation of the text against those whose interpretations differed. It was an on-going game, and ultimately, who the heck really knew? He had become invested in a perspective, an interpretation, and his career depended upon his BEING RIGHT.

Others might well be right, others might well be wrong, but the fact that debates were on-going demonstrated the uncertainty. Plus, several literary theorists such as Derridah and the Post-Modernist movements were shaking the whole thing up, proposing the “right” was just a matter of perspective and that everything was relative. Post Modernists went so far as to shift the center to the reader, giving the text a life of it’s own, communicating with the reader independent of the author. With all of this going on, academics still have to prove they are RIGHT and fight to maintain it. This is the backdrop of our concepts of “authority”.

Here’s the problem with mysticism, however. Mystics can’t prove jack. There isn’t a mystic who was ever alive who was able to “prove” God existed. Shoot, for all we know Moses went up there on the mountain to take a nap and came back with a bunch of stories that he made up as he went along. The experience of the mystic is ultimately just about that, the mystic’s experience. One mystic who experiences one thing, and has certain revelations can never really negate another mystic having a different experience with a different set of revelations, because it's based, ultimately on a subjective experience. Which begins to undermine our concepts of authority. Who is right?

Ultimately, many Gnostics would argue that it is ultimately about presence and power in a person’s experience. If a person can manifest the presence and power of Goddess/God, can shift one’s center of name and form to the divine I AM or Enlightenment Experience at will, then what more is it about? Prove what? If one abides in the source of all satisfaction, what more is there to be gained by proving it?

Some people will find that certain methods are able to help them enact this or move distinctly towards unfolding this experience within themselves, while other methods don’t work for them. So what? Does that mean that one method is wrong and another is right? The Buddha taught several different methods, Tantra, Vajrayana, Mantrayana, Hinayana and so forth, each method for different practitioners with different temperaments. Many Gnostics would propose that Jesus did the same thing with his disciples.

Perhaps there are different veins of the Western light-transmission, with different methods for different temperaments. We’ve all heard of so many traditions, the Rosacrutians, the Templars, the Cathars, the Illuminati and so on and so forth. Some people might try to link them up, and perhaps they do link up historically with Jesus, perhaps some arose spontaneously. But the one’s that are alive with the Holy Spirit come from the same source, this Pleuroma of Light. Those that are dead, are dead, and no matter how “right” they are in a debate, this will not “fix” their emptiness.

So the question arises, from where do we derive our “authority”? From the Pleuroma of Light who speaks the truth of one’s experience or intuition in vulnerability and without contrivance, or from the Demiurge of ignorance that deceives by beating others into submission in order to demonstrate it’s power and “authority”?

I think these are important questions to ask ourselves as we reach out to one another with this new Gnostic movement and begin to sort out our experiences and educate ourselves and one-another in the Gnostic movement. I think it is important not to fall into the traps of the old paradigms of HOW knowledge is discussed and disseminated, for I think this is a crucial element in the formation and generation of any light transmission. In fact, I think that sometimes the HOW of it's dissemination may be MORE important than the content!