The Gnostic Mystery: A Connection Between Ancient and Modern Mysticism

Comparative studies often reveal similarities between greatly different cultures, even if those cultures are geographically separated by thousands of miles or historically distinct by thousands of years. This has been especially true in religion where similar ideas have been propounded by tribes or clans that have on the surface no contact historically or geographically with one another. For the phenomenologist this kind of transcultural link or synchronicity is important because it raises the question of how religious ideas emerge and develop over time. Are religious ideas part of an innate, biological, developmental sequence that manifest over the course of human evolution? Or are religious ideas simply the product of historical transfusion, played over the course in time where one tribe touches another tribe thereby transforming concepts in a very material and socially determinable way?

Although this thesis does not answer those profound questions, it does provide a remarkable example of religious synchronicity, where two diverse spiritual traditions, Gnostic and Sant, posit very similar ideas about salvation and the nature of God. In this thesis I demonstrate how Gnostic and Sant Mat ideas concerning ontology, cosmology, and soteriology are remarkably close, despite the fact that the Gnostic tradition arose in the Middle East in the first and second century C.E. and that Sant Mat emerged in North India in the 14th and 15th century. My main sources are the Nag Hammadi Library for the Gnostic tradition and the writings of Tulsi Sahib and Shiv Dayal Singh for the Sant tradition.

REVIEWS
"Andrea Diem has done an excellent and enlightening cross-cultural study."--Professor Ninian Smart, author of The Long Search

"Excellent work and a very interesting study."--Professor Birger Pearson, Editor of Nag Hammadhi Codices IX and X

"It is an interesting comparative essay, and the comparisons generally are too numerous and specific to be explained away by chance."--Professor Gerald Larson, author of Classical Samkhya