14AR19-06

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Apologia Report 19:6 (1,189)

March 5, 2014

Subject: Have you encountered "The Gnostic evangelist"?

In this issue:

THE OCCULT - Yoga Journal explains "the secret force that evolves your consciousness and opens the doorways to your soul"

PAGELS, ELAINE - understanding her alternative version of Christianity

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THE OCCULT

"Force of Nature" by Sally Kempton -- perhaps the most clearly religious description of yoga's occult connections that we've seen yet in Yoga Journal (Feb '14, pp43-52). Its subtitle: "The secret to harnessing yoga's true power starts when you turn your attention inside."

Kempton is a prolific writer for Yoga Journal. Her focus in this article is shakti, which she describes as "the subtle energy that's the true secret sauce [sic] of yoga. Anyone who practices yoga for a while will have had these 'shakti moments.' ...

"What you may not realize is that these experiences are signs that your asana practice is fulfilling one of its main purposes: to raise your felt sense of shakti.

"Here's a radical truth: True yogic transformation actually depends on your ability to find, feel, and harvest this subtle inner power. Not only that, the shakti that you kindle in your yoga practice can spill over and enliven every part of your life. ...

"Shakti means power, energy, or force. ...

"Shakti is the innate creativity at the heart of all living things. ...

"[T]here's a particular aspect of shakti that specifically governs our spiritual evolution. ... [It] unfolds the state of union, or yoga, between body, mind and spirit... [It, sometimes called] kundalini (psychospiritual force) - is the secret force that evolves your consciousness and opens the doorways to your soul. ...

"I learned - as you can - how to dialogue with the energy in my body. Most of us know how to pay attention and even how to let go. What we don't often realize is possible is dialogue. Words themselves are aspects of shakti, which is one reason why using a mantra can create such powerful results in your practice. But direct conversation is just as important. ... Because the shakti is innately intelligent, she responds to suggestions and even to requests ...

"The more attuned you become to the flow of shakti in your body and mind, the more you begin to welcome her play within you, the more empowered and guided you'll become off the mat as well.

"Dialoguing with your shakti can take many forms. For instance, if there's a question you need answered, you can bring the question into your heart and ask the shakti to give you an answer.

"Then you might pick up your pen and write whatever comes, letting your words flow spontaneously, as expressions of shakti. Or you can ask the question and then become attentive to the ways that answers come to you as you go about your daily life. ...

"In the secret tradition of shakti, to live your yoga means to live in partnership with the deep interior current of this awakening force. ... To let her mold you invisibly into the uniquely radiant being you are meant to be."

Kempton <www.sallykempton.com> is the author of Awakening Shakti [1]. For biographical insights, see <www.ow.ly/uh9am>.

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PAGELS, ELAINE

"The Gnostic Evangelist: The Neo-Gnostic 'Alternative Christianity' of Elaine Pagels" by William J. Tighe (Associate Professor of History, Muhlenberg College) -- begins with a summary of Pagels' background. Referring to Walter Bauer's 1934 view that "there was no 'orthodoxy' at the beginning of Christianity. ... Pagels, although she has considerably altered the details and the supporting argument, still upholds the essence of Bauer's thesis in claiming that there was no primitive Christian orthodoxy, but only an inchoate welter of diversity: 'Christianities' rather than 'Christianity.' In a way, she has even made it more radical by insisting that the documents comprising the New Testament canon themselves ought not to have any priority either in time of composition, in authenticity of contents, or of authority for belief over other, non-canonical documents.

"But in doing this - and this is what differentiates her from the skeptical scholars who comprise the 'Jesus Seminar,' of whom the most egregious must be John Dominic Crossan - she manages to give the impression that she is not an enemy of religious belief or of Christianity, but rather someone who wants to uncover the true spiritual essence of Christianity and the truth about its origins by stripping away from it 'church dogmas' that have perverted the one and obscured the other."

Tighe also discusses Pagels' most popular books, finding that: "Her 2003 book, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas [2] is (I think it is fair to say) the most propagandistic (for the most part implicitly) of her books, as well as the one with the strongest autobiographical undertones. In fact, one might plausibly view this book as a kind of justification of her desire to participate in the life and worship of Christianity (in her case, of the Episcopal Church) on her own terms and without accepting the creedal and dogmatic claims of orthodox Christianity."

Tighe writes that Pagels works "possess a direct appeal to 'communities of sentiment' that have achieved a certain cultural and especially media prominence in recent decades. These include ... sub-communities ... that wish to identify themselves as Christian and to participate in the life of Christian churches *on their own terms.*

...

"For the most part, the proponents of such innovations, it appears, do not wish for their church bodies to repudiate their confessional documents or to revoke their dogmatic decrees (unless, as in the case of the Catholic Church, they bear directly upon their aspirations), but rather to ignore them and to produce justifications for these actions that either ignore the confessional statement or attempt to twist them in their favor. The effect of this is, of course, to relegate the confessions to the status of mere historical documents of uncertain authority and limited value."

Tighe's concluding emphasis is that "it is worth underlining how much of the general phenomenon of religious revisionism - of which the Pagels enterprise is a striking example - is media-driven." This is briefly discussed. Touchstone, Nov/Dec '13, pp34-39.

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Awakening Shakti, by Sally Kempton (Sounds True, 2013, paperback, 376 pages) <www.ow.ly/u9NlQ>

2 - Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, by Elaine Pagels (Vintage, 2004, paperback, 272 pages) <www.ow.ly/u9zd2>

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