Tim Freke - The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom
Here you can read online Tim Freke - The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2018, publisher: Tim Freke Publications, genre: Religion. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
- Book:The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom
- Author:
- Publisher:Tim Freke Publications
- Genre:
- Year:2018
- Rating:3 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, authors of The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and the Lost Goddess, return with a powerful indictment of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic fundamentalism and a passionate reinterpretation of Gnostic spirituality. According to Freke and Gandy, religiously inspired acts of violence, such as the attacks on 9/11, are nothing new. They are the continuation of a long and bloody history of brutality caused by mistaking bizarre old books for the Word of God. The time has come to end religious intolerance and wake up to oneness by rediscovering the Gnostic way of transforming oneself and the world.Freke and Gandys Incendiary New Book Is a Wake-Up Call to the WorldWhat if the Old Testament is a work of fiction, Jesus never existed, and Muhammad was a mobster?What if the Bible and the Quran are works of political propaganda created by Taliban-like fundamentalists to justify the sort of religious violence we are witnessing in the world today?What if there is a big idea that could free us from the us-versus-them world created by religion and make it possible for us to truly love our neighboursand even our enemies?What if it is possible to awaken to a profound state of oneness and love, which the Gnostic Christians symbolized by the enigmatic figure of the laughing Jesus?Discover for Yourself Why the Gnostic Jesus Laughs
Tim Freke: author's other books
Who wrote The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Tim Freke
Timothy Freke
Saint. Mary Magdalene
Freke Timothy
Tim Freke
Willis Barnstone
The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
THE LAUGHING JESUS
RELIGIOUS LIES
AND GNOSTIC WISDOM
TIM FREKE &
PETER GANDY
This book is dedicated
to all those who love
their enemies
T!M FREKE is a spiritual pioneer whose work has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He is the author of more than 30 books, which have been translated into 15 languages, including a top 6 Amazon 'Surprise Bestseller' and Daily Telegraph 'Book of the Year'.
Tim has spent his life exploring world spirituality and is able to guide others to a direct experience of the awakened state. He presents life-transforming retreats, experiential seminars and entertaining evenings of 'standup philosophy' throughout the world and online.
To watch free videos of Tim, find out about forthcoming events and subscribe to his inspirational 'WAKE UP CALL' newsletter, visit www.timfreke.com
Peter Gandy has an M.A. in classical civilisation and is an internationally respected authority on the ancient Pagan Mysteries and early Christianity.
Copyright 2005 by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form without the prior written consent of the author/publisher or the terms relayed to you herein.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I
THE BATHWATER
CHAPTER 1. GNOSTIC SPIRITUALITY AND LITERALIST RELIGION
The letter kills but the spirit brings to life.
Paul, Letter to the Ephesians [ ]
Wake up! Rouse yourself from the collective coma you mistake for 'real life'. See through the illusion of separateness and recognize that we are all essentially one. Although we appear to be isolated individuals, in reality there is one awareness dreaming itself to be everyone and everything. This is our shared essential nature. The simple secret to enjoying this dream we call 'life' is to wake up to oneness. Because, knowing you are one with all, you will find yourself in love with all. You will fall in love with living. This is the message of the original Christians, who symbolised this awakened state with the enigmatic figure of 'the laughing Jesus'. [ ]
Have you ever seen a picture of Jesus laughing? Probably not, because we have inherited a distorted form of Christianity created by the Roman Church in the fourth century, which focuses exclusively on Jesus the 'man of sorrows'. The image that has dominated our culture is that of a man being tortured to death on a cross. But the original Christians didn't see Jesus as an historical man who 'suffered for our sins'. They viewed Jesus as the mythical hero of a symbolic teaching story, which represents the spiritual journey leading to the experience of awakening they called 'gnosis', or 'knowing'.
The original Christians were inspired men and women who saw how good life could be if we would just wake up and live in love. They imagined a new world that would no longer be divided into slaves or citizens, men or women, Gentiles or Jews. But inadvertently, this band of non-conformists gave birth to a totalitarian regime that would rule Europe with an iron fist for over a thousand years. The result was not Heaven on Earth, but the Holy Roman Empire. The dream became a nightmare.
The Roman Church did all it could to suppress the teachings of gnosis and the image of the laughing Jesus. It succeeded so well that it now seems strange to even suggest that Christianity was originally about awakening. But in the middle of the twentieth century some of the texts of the original Christians were found in a cave near Nag Hammadi in Egypt. In these texts the message of awakening is proclaimed loud and clear.
Those who have realised gnosis have set themselves free by waking up from the dream in which they lived and have become themselves again. [ ]
How can you bear to be asleep, when it's your responsibility to be awake? [ ]
You are asleep and dreaming. Wake up. [ ]
Listen to my teachings, which are good and practical, and end the sleep which weighs so heavily upon you. [ ]
People are caught up in many vain illusions and empty fictions, which torment them like sleepers prey to nightmares. When they wake up they see that all those dreams were nothing. This is the way it is with those who have cast ignorance aside, as if waking from sleep. They no longer see the world as real, but like a dream at night. They value gnosis as if it were the dawn. Whilst they exist in a state of ignorance it is as if everyone is asleep. Experiencing gnosis is like waking up. [ ]
Such teachings of awakening are not exclusively Christian. Throughout history men and women of all faiths have woken up to oneness and love. We use the broad term 'Gnostic' meaning 'knower' to refer to all such individuals because, although they express their insights in the various languages of their diverse cultures, they all talk about the experience of awakening or gnosis.
These charismatic individuals often inspired the formation of small communities dedicated to waking up. But, ironically, the more successful such groups become the more they turn into their opposite. What begins as a loose alliance of free-thinking non-conformists degenerates over time into an organised, authoritarian religion, and people end up completely misunderstanding the original message. We refer to this degenerate form of Gnosticism as 'Literalism'.
Gnosticism is sometimes called 'the perennial philosophy' because it has been found in all cultures and all times. It is not that Gnostics all say exactly the same thing. They don't. It is rather that their teachings are like fingers pointing from different perspectives to the same experience of gnosis. Unfortunately, most people focus on the finger and miss the point. This is Literalism. Literalist religions are clubs for people who want to worship the finger of their founder as the One True Finger, but who have no understanding of the experience of awakening towards which it points.
This book is a damning indictment of Literalist religion and a passionate affirmation of Gnostic spirituality. Let's start by clearly discriminating Gnosticism from Literalism:
Gnostics teach that the important thing is to wake up and experience gnosis for ourselves.
Literalists teach that the important thing is to blindly believe in religious dogmas.
Gnostics interpret their teachings as signposts pointing to the experience of awakening.
Literalists see their teachings as literally the truth itself.
Gnostics use symbolic parables to communicate the way to wake up.
Literalists mistake Gnostic myths for literal accounts of miraculous historical events and end up lost in irrational superstition.
Gnostics know that all books contain the words of men.
Literalists believe that sacred scripture is the Word of God.
Gnostics understand that the way the wisdom of awakening is expressed must constantly evolve to address the ever-changing human condition.
Literalists want a fixed canon of scripture which has absolute authority for all time.
Gnostics want us to think for ourselves, so that we become more conscious and wake up.
Literalists want us to believe what they believe, so that we will join their cult.
Gnostics understand that life itself is a process of awakening.
Literalists believe their particular religion is the only way to the truth and condemn everyone else as lost in diabolical error.
Gnosticism is about waking up from the illusion of separateness to oneness and love.
Literalism keeps us asleep in an 'us versus them' world of division and conflict, inhabited by the 'chosen' and the 'damned'.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom»
Look at similar books to The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Timothy Freke
Saint. Mary Magdalene
Freke Timothy
Tim Freke
Willis Barnstone
Reviews about «The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom»
Discussion, reviews of the book The Laughing Jesus: Religious Lies and Gnostic Wisdom and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.